


Snow White: A Fractured Fairy Tale

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fantasy, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 06:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21095021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: Kaoru is the fairest in the land but who's to know when she works in the stables, maybe some disgruntled men in the woods can give her a new start. . .





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin. This means I don't own Kaoru or Enishi either, most certainly, which is too bad because if I did then. . . well. . . I want to keep this PG-13 so I won't say what they would have done if I owned them.
> 
> Originally written in 2005. Old stuff. Not necessarily proud of it, but keeping myself honest by archiving it all...

"Want to hear a story?" The mother's voice is soft with fondness. And the bed springs complain as she sits down.

"Sure." The little boy doesn't sound very interested, but whatever prolongs bedtime is good by him. His hands are folded above the covers, thumbs twiddling.

"It's a fairy tale. . ." She smiles in an expectant way, knowing what the response to this will be.

"That's kid's stuff." There's an insistent note to his voice that reveals that he is still more child than adult, but hasn't learned to value that yet.

"Yes and no. What if I called it a legend, would that make you feel better?" She's laughing inside, and it's coming out in her voice.

"Maybe I don't want to hear it now." He's a sharp kid, he seems to know when he's being teased and doesn't react well to it.

"I think you do."

"No I don't."

"Yes, you do." Her voice is getting testy. They have similar temperaments, this mother and child, and patience is not generally part of them. "Now quiet while I talk."

"Whatever. . ." He lost, but even if it's boring it's still time awake and that's good enough for him.

"A while ago. . ."

"Shouldn't it be 'once upon a time'?" He likes interrupting, but only when he can show he's smarter than someone. His mother knows that he didn't get that from her side of the genetic pool.

"This didn't happen that long ago. I know that last week can seem like once upon a time to you, but in the grand scheme of things this was very current." That testy note is still there, and the kid seems to note it more consciously this time because he puts on an innocent look.

"Ok, so 'a while ago'. . ." Not many promising stories began like that, but he was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for a couple minutes. He prompts his mother with a more eager note inserted into his voice for her benefit.

"A while ago. . ."

***

A childless king and queen passed their days wishing in their hearts for a son or daughter. If they wanted to be perfectly honest with one another, they would have said they were hoping for a son because he would be able to inherit the kingdom while a daughter could not. Rules in those days didn't favor women, and sometimes it's harder to change people's minds than you'd think, because tradition can be both an ugly and a beautiful word for those bound by it. Regardless, a son is what they wanted and a daughter is what they got. . . but at a great price.

The queen, fragile at the best of times, could not bring the baby to the full end of pregnancy let alone survive the birth. The baby was pulled from her mother, small and squalling but full of the life her mother gave to bring her out into the world. Medical practices were not advanced, and even if they had been it would have been a touch and go situation for the queen. As it was, the doctors did the best they could to save her, and when it was clear that she would not survive the night they did the best they could to ease her pain.

Delirious with drugs, she called for her husband, for her child, for her parents and siblings in a far away land, and many other names from her childhood and adulthood only a few of which the king recognized when he entered her chamber. The queen grasped her husband's hand with the strange strength that some people find as they are easing out of the world and charged him with two things: to take care of their daughter, and to go on with his life. She knew that her husband loved her dearly, to the point of wanting to follow his wife to her long rest, but he could not for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of the infant that even now was being attended across the room from where his wife lay.

The king swore to do as she asked while holding back tears and kissing his wife's hand until her fingers loosened and her eyes stopped blinking. What should have been a night to rejoice became a night to mourn, and the wailing of the infant was drowned out by the wailing of hundreds, even thousands, of others once news passed through the kingdom.

What the king had sworn with such sincerity to his wife while she was alive, he found that while dead those words stuck in his throat most bitterly as he spoke to her spirit. This was not how he had wanted a child. They could have adopted a child, or appointed an heir from one of the many houses closely related to their line, but instead they had tried again and again until they had gotten what they thought would be most precious and most dear. His daughter was no blessing to him when she hailed her mother's death. Fatherly love overcame everything but a deep and abiding sadness in the king which over time became apathy. While he was kind to his daughter, he showed no outward signs of affection as she grew and neglected her benignly.

It was a decade past the girl's birth and her mother's death when the king's eye was caught by another woman. The main attraction of this woman was the striking resemblance she had to the late queen. Except for the eyes. The eyes of this new woman, who was to become the new queen and stepmother to the little girl, were tightly drawn and suspicious of those around her. She appraised everything she looked at, and the appraisals were often unfavorable to the object she examined. They were not inherently cruel eyes, but they were hard as diamonds and just as cold.

At first the little girl was extremely taken with this new mother. She was only ten after all, and not at all doted on by her father, so the idea of familial affection had all been invested in the idea of her deceased mother. She had gathered information on the dead queen from the talk of palace servants and the pictures in the long gallery of her where her father would often walk and gaze upon his ancestors while seeking peace of mind. Surely, if this woman looked so much like the mother who had loved her enough to trade away her life, then the little girl would be loved by her. In a way, she was correct. Her new mother loved her, but she loved her as one person may love a particularly well made doll.

All that the new queen valued, when it came down to the essentials, was beauty. She had admired the beauty of the palace and of the kingdom with its lush and thick forests and deep clear lakes. The king was a handsome man, even wasted by a decade of grief, and she thought that his beauty was lesser than the jewels and gowns that he showered upon her, but she was willing enough to be what he wished so long as she could be surrounded by the things she found fair. And, despite the lack of tending, the little girl had grown and blossomed like a wild rose. The queen, prizing that pretty face, showed her as much attention as the girl could want from a mother, but never love.

The new queen began to tire of the jewels and gowns, and even of the child who refused to get out of the stables and gardens long enough to be dressed and powdered and paraded in front of the other beautiful women who the new queen surrounded herself with like a court of fairy maidens. She became dissatisfied, disconsolate, and obsessive. Nothing was beautiful enough to please her anymore. She had reached the pinnacle and there was no where else to go but inward. Vanity became her routine and eventually her tormentor.

Throughout the land she searched for the perfect mirror, the one that would show her at her best advantage. Craftsmen came from all over the kingdom, seeking to give her what she was looking for and collect upon the huge reward she had offered. No one could please her, and the stress was starting to tell upon those eyes of hers, the ones that were not inherently cruel but which were becoming bright with madness and slightly wrinkled from how she squinted at her form in the mirror, seeking minute imperfections. Always it was the mirror that was at fault. The king despaired again, thinking that he was losing another wife, but really feeling like he was losing his first wife once more. His cycle of grief was renewed, and he became all but useless to his current wife.

Suddenly, on an ill wind, a sorcerer visited the current queen in private. She was stripped naked, standing in front of a mirror, as was her habit these days, and looking upon her form critically. He appeared and praised her appearance, immediately drawn to her, and offered her the mirror she so desired if she would deliver to him the kingdom itself. Killing the king would be easy for one so close to him.

The queen was entranced by this man, wrapped from head to toe in bandages, burned within and without by the devil's fire of his art. If he had what she most wanted, then he was her savior. She forgot her rage over her witnessed nakedness and readily agreed if he first brought her the mirror. The sorcerer laughed his hoarse demon's laugh and conjured a rare object from whatever hell he had stored it. It practically glowed, and the new queen was entranced, for the first time falling in love with someone besides herself. This man had given her what she most wanted in the world, and she would serve him until she died, and so she swore.

He told her to ask of it what she would, for it was a magic mirror, and it would give her answers to the questions that burned her to ashes every night in her mind. He understood about these impulses, the ones that stole your soul. The new queen stroked the cool glass lovingly and called out in a clear voice:

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is the fairest?"

Misty eyes and lips formed, swirling like a storm inside of some world of its own outside of the bounds of the new queen or even the sorcerer.

"You are, Yumi, you are the fairest."

And all was well. . . until the next night, when the queen administered poison with a kiss to the king and watched him die in her arms. She owed him that much, to know the face of his betrayer. She knew she had sold her soul for a mirror or rare value to a sorcerer that held her heart. The sorcerer was swift that night, coming in amid the confusion and decimating the troops of the now dead king, killing indiscriminately all those who carried a sword or bow. His own troops took their place, and for months on end he had his men hunt down those that were fled and hid. Once his reign was secure, he was content, for he had what he desired. The sorcerer had a queen, he had a kingdom, and he had all the wealth of the kingdom to continue to build his army. In another few years he would have an army large enough to march upon the next kingdom over, and that was well worth the wait.

During that night of carnage, the princess had not been forgotten. A young teen, in her sixteenth year, she had been among the stable hands and tending to the frightened horseflesh while fires ravages the barracks nearby. The new queen, the only mother she had ever known, came to find her where she knew she would be. She knew what her new master, the sorcerer, would wish for this last link to the old line. Death had been the king's lot, and though his daughter should share it from a tactical perspective the queen did not want to kill her for she was not immune to emotion and above all she hated to destroy beauty.

The princess, looking at her traitorous mother figure, felt horrible angry things that bit into her soul and made her hard and old in a way she had never felt before. Father dead, life burning, she thought about killing this woman and herself. Instead, the princess took control of her fiery temper and accepted her stepmother's offer. So long as she stayed in the stables and caused no trouble, then the new queen would forget that she had ever existed.

To the princess, it was an easy enough deal to make. Many people in the castle had pretended the same thing for years.

***

"This is pretty good so far. Was there a lot of blood? Did the princess get revenge?" The kid's bright eyes light up as he imagines the carnage. The mother knows he's been spending too much time around his father and his father's friends.

"If you interrupt me again I won't tell you about any of the bloody parts." She strokes a hand through his dark hair and he smiles at her adoringly. There are soft parts in him still, even if he hides them to make himself seem older and more experienced.

"I'll be good." There is no hesitation to the promise. Her audience is assured. She looks over at the wick burning in the lamp by his bed. It will take a while to tell this story, and he has heard parts of it before, but she feels like telling it in its entirety tonight. The oil may run out. More can be gotten. . . there is no more need to stall.

"Mom. . .?"

"Sorry, it's just that sometimes the beginnings of stories are so unpleasant that not even a happy ending can give you real peace. . ."


	2. Chapter 2

"Kaoru! Get that water over quick! This one is just about ready to drop!"

She grabbed the bucket from where it lay near the well and moved as fast as she could towards the trough inside the long stable. Shishio's soldiers shouldn't treat their animals like that in the middle of summer. The animals may be well fed and well treated, but they were not immune to dehydration or fatigue. Shishio's soldiers were not the most considerate of men. At least the horses were better treated by those rough men than the peasants nearby. Thoughts like that only served to raise her temper by large intervals, and it was too hot today to be getting upset.

"What was it today? 'Tax gathering'? More recruiting? Seems like every mother's son old enough to hold a sword was brought here months ago."

The old man who ran the stables, and had known Kaoru as a child, took no real note or offense at her words. She was only unguarded around him, speaking out against the king, and as she had always been kind to him and his two granddaughters he let her live as normal a life as possible here among the smells and sounds of the stables. Heaven knew that her life had never been pleasant or normal as a rule.

"Isn't for the likes of me to say what those 'knights' have been up to. But if they keep treating the animals in such a way I shall have to send word up to His Majesty. I doubt he would approve of their lack of discipline." He added with a snort. "Good horses are hard to come by, and expensive, while soldiers are cheap."

Kaoru frowned. "Life didn't used to be so cheap, horse or man."

"You best keep your voice down when saying such things. Brush this beast down, he could use some attention. The good kind." The old horse doctor didn't want Kaoru to get herself in trouble with that opinionated mouth of hers.

"Of course." She never bowed or scraped to anyone. It wasn't her way, but she would do her duties. Cleaning and tending the animals was a more tolerable way to live than begging in the streets. She wasn't fit for most ways of life outside of the palace walls. In fact, she hadn't seen the outside of the palace walls for years.

It had been nearly two years since her father's death and still Kaoru was helpless and trapped in this life as a stablehand. Somehow this life had become terrible to her, but a lot of that probably had to do with the fact that before she had done it by choice and now she did it to survive. As long as she was useful and unrecognizable then she was under Shishio's radar and therefore alive. And as long as Kaoru was alive then she could think and plan and dream of the day that she got to revenge her father's death. First she would find a way to kill that damned usurper, and then she would kill the traitorous queen herself. It would have to be painful. Something where she could stab a lot and hear that woman scream.

Vigorously she brushed the horse as her anger fueled her in the hot weather to be active despite exhaustion. She was good at what she did, and eventually pride in her work took the place of her anger. This was her world for now, the horses, the few stablehands who worked here, and a handful of people who still knew who she was and who had survived the purge. They were few enough as it was, and she didn't want to endanger herself or them. She didn't begrudge them their turned loyalties because keeping your blood in your body was a powerful inducement for turning a blind eye to the evil nature of your employer.

Two years was a long time when every day you woke up with the knowledge that the people you hated most in the world slept mere yards away from you, through twisting hallways and behind locked doors in rooms that were once so familiar. Kaoru wished now that she had not spurned the privilege of her childhood because being dirty all the time and in second hand clothes she had patched herself was misery when there was no bath at the end of the long work day and clean nightgowns to crawl into a soft bed with.

The princess she had been was almost a memory of a stranger. There had been little enough to rejoice in back then. . . a father who wished to forget her, a stepmother who wished to dress her up and present her like a trained animal to her glittering friends, and no real friends she could trust or talk to. Back in those days she fancied that it would have been better if she had never been born. Her mornings were filled with lessons from a tutor and her afternoons with climbing trees, watching the knights train, or trying to steal a ride on a war horse in the stables. That's what she had been doing the night the fires came.

It had been a particularly bad day. Her father was in a deep depression over the way Yumi had been wasting away. Kaoru could do nothing for her, and she was certainly not the cause, but still it felt as if her father were blaming her. That silent blame was more than she could take, and her hurt transformed into a willful anger. Her spoiled sixteen year old self had wrathfully awakened the old man who ran the stables and demanded to be let in to pick out a horse for a night ride.

Shaking his head, warning her of the dangers, they had been in among the smells of sounds of the stable at night when the agitated movements of the horses rose above their quietly arguing voices. They smelled smoke, and they heard the clash of swords. An alarm call went up, and the old man told Kaoru to hide in a stack of hay while he discovered what the matter was.

Never one to follow orders quietly for long, she crawled out of the hay, brushing off the itchy stuff and picking it out of her hair as she climbed to the top of a pile of the cubed stuff and looked out a high window. The sight that greeted her eyes stole her breath even as a whiff of smoke polluted her lungs and forced her eyes to water. After coughing, she brought her sleeve to her mouth and looked out one more time to confirm the vision in front of her.

Men in dark armor fought her father's knights, notable more for the fact that many were in mismatched or hastily donned armor or even nightclothes. They were sleepy, and they were off guard. Blood was everywhere in her field of vision, and she sat back down heavily, breathing quickly through her sleeve. The water in her eyes was not solely from the smoke any longer. What of her stepmother and father? Were they harmed? Should she escape or look for them? How could she get out when those men in dark armor seemed to be swarming the place?

Deep calming breaths that she thought she was taking turned out to be panicked hyperventilation. She wanted to fight. She wanted to help. But she had not been trained, except for basic self defense, and she had no weapons except for what could be found in this barn. The pitchfork at the bottom of this stack of hay would be a good start. She crawled back down and grabbed that, hiding as well as she could in the darkness until she could form a plan of attack.

The door far away from her had creaked open and Kaoru had poised herself to strike, trying to mentally ready herself for the first time she would kill another human being. Honestly, to this day, she felt as if she could not have done it even if it had been one of the men in dark armor. In self defense the goal had always been disarm and disable, but no maiming or killing. It felt barbarous to be even contemplating it.

No rough face had appeared in front of her, but the powdered and made up vision of her beautiful stepmother. Kaoru sighed her relief, and then felt her body tighten in alarm. What if someone had seen her come in? She was in as much if not more danger than Kaoru. Faster than she had ever been before because of the adrenaline flooding her body, Kaoru grabbed her stepmother and pulled her into the shadows.

"Did anyone follow you?" Kaoru saw her open her mouth and then interrupted her before she could answer. "Take this, I'll grab some horseshoes and maybe we can slip through to the edge of the grounds. I know that if we can get to the edge of the orchards then maybe a branch will lead over the wall and we can. . ."

"Kaoru."

". . . but I don't know if you can climb as well as I can, or make it over in that gown of yours. And you should make sure you keep your head down so that people think we're just scared servants. . ."

"Kaoru!"

"What of my father? I can't expect you'd know. Never mind, we'll have to leave and hope that he's gotten out on his own. He may have looked frail, but I've seen him fight and. . ."

The slap that Yumi gave to her cheek stopped Kaoru's constant nervous chatter as she tried to scheme a way out. Coldly the story had poured out of that poisonous woman, of her alliance with Shishio, of the death of the king, and of Kaoru's options. She could live as a servant or die as a princess, and it was up to her.

The words had been on the tip of her tongue, the readiness to die with honor. Even the warm spittle in her mouth seemed to be waiting for her stepmother's expressionless face. It would be strangely satisfying to watch the ugliness she would no doubt show when Kaoru spat on her in defiance. However, a cold voice in Kaoru's heart calmed her. Wait, it told her. That first half a year, she would wish many times she had not listened at that crucial moment.

Every day following the massacre at the castle there were hangings of her father's supporters. It started with important political figures, their bodies transported all over the countryside and dragged through villages and cities before they were hung along the side of major roads as an example. Those who crossed Shishio would only find death, gruesome and public. Eventually, the executions of the old king's loyal knights became spectacles with a jeering audience calling for blood. People were scared, they were unsure, and the way they turned on one another so quickly had horrified the princess. All hope of a counter attack, of being saved and avenged, had to be pushed back for more practical concerns like getting done with her chores so that she could get a meal that night.

Eventually, the hangings stopped, the bodies taken down. That's about the time the call went out for more men. Shishio needed an army, a large one, and those that did not comply with his conscription notice were put into a position where they either agreed or they were killed. Infantry trained in the winter, were sent back to their farms to work in spring so that there would be enough food to pay for taxes and to feed the populace. Life was grim, but people adapted. You became what you needed to be, and who you were had to be put aside.

She wished every day for the strength to retain her will and her resolve. So long as she didn't fall into despair she had a chance. Kaoru was a princess, even if those who knew could not acknowledge it. Of all the people in the kingdom, she felt like she had been stripped of more of her identity. Sometimes she questioned whether it was an identity she even wanted to admit to at the crucial moment. It hadn't brought her anything but pain.

"That's it. I'm going to have a bath." Kaoru felt more dirtied by her gloomy thoughts than by her job. She dropped her brush down, and marched out of the stable as her fellow servants looked at her with curiosity. Kaoru was always putting on airs, in their view, and they had gotten used to her regal ways. Mostly, she got away with it because while she was bossy she was also kind. If she wanted a bath enough to risk a whipping for skipping out on work, then that was her choice. It wouldn't be the first time. Flies buzzed, horses ate and drank, and life went on inside their little world of the stables.

In an entirely different world, everything was changing.

Yumi had spent an almost disturbing amount of time in front of the mirror recently. It wasn't that she was getting a different answer than usual, because it confirmed that she was the fairest in the kingdom every time she asked. But, in the past few months, it had been, well, hesitating before it answered. The first time she had noticed the pause, she had asked Shishio if it was possible for the mirror to lie, or to break. He had told her that it was both impartial and magically sound in that smoothly confident voice that she admired. Anything wrong was probably in her imagination. She had readily agreed. That was easier to accept than the truth.

However, last night when she had asked, the hesitation of the mirror had been long enough for her to no longer be able to fool herself. She had been sleeping badly for days, waiting for the news. Someone was either as beautiful as she was, causing the mirror confusion, or someone was tampering with the mirror to make her miserable. Yumi hoped for the former, because that could be easily dealt with.

If there was someone more beautiful than she, then she would simply send her assassin, her Hunstman, to have the individual killed. It was so easy, it almost made her want to laugh, but she had to wait until the mirror told her who had surpassed her. That was what was disintegrating her sanity these days, the waiting. It still might be a problem with her overactive mind, just as her beloved Shishio had said. He was almost certainly right. However, just in case, she had made sure that Soujiro had not been sent out on other missions to take care of any inconvenient political matters. She wanted Soujiro to deal with this personally, as the most loyal of Shishio's assassins. He had been trained and raised under the old king, but he had clearly stated that his loyalty was to the crown and not to the individual who wore it. There had been no reason to doubt his resolve as he performed all his missions with complete success and discretion.

Sitting at her dressing table and mirror, she bit at her lip. Was it too early to ask the mirror again? She was still in her clothes from the day before, having not bothered to change for a night of sleep that wouldn't come. Waiting was one of those things she absolutely despised to do. All this worry and stress would cause lines, she knew, and now more than ever she was concerned with keeping her beauty so that the sight of her form would please her Shishio.

Blast it, she would ask the mirror now. If she had to ask every hour or every minute, it didn't matter. She would demand to know until the mirror told her who her invisible tormentor was, this unknown competitor. Yumi swept away from her table of perfumes, makeup, and jewels. Those things meant nothing to her compared to an intangible title. The cover on the mirror was swept away, dropping to the ground, and revealing her reflection in the darkly tinted surface.

"Mirror, mirror, tell me who is the fairest in the land."

The glass went from reflective to opaque. The various shades of grey swirled in it, coalescing into a face with sightless pits for eyes and a mouth and nose which churned as violently as the rest of the face. The slight vertigo that often accompanied staring too closely at the face was not present today for it was indistinguishable from her tiredness. The mouth stretched and distorted as it answered, as if it was having trouble holding together a recognizable form. It looked like it was in pain, but the voice was still monotone and without inflection, husky and slow.

"Queen, the answer to your question is embodied in this maiden," The face disappeared, fading away to reveal in startling color the swimming form of a girl the traitorous Yumi knew all too well. She knew her mercy would come back to haunt her, but she didn't think it would happen this quickly. "The princess, Kaoru."

Kaoru scrubbed at her face in the reflection, immersed up to her shoulders in the nearby stream that ran through the edge of the palace gardens. It would be a river except that most of it was routed through the palace garden for irrigation. What was left was substantial and tame enough that sometimes the servants and children of servants swam in it in the evenings on hot days. Kaoru hadn't even bothered to remove her clothes. The cloth would dry quickly on a hot and dry day like today.

Now that she looked at the girl, it seemed self evident that this problem would arise. Her hair was too black, her lips too pink and full, her eyes an enduring shade of blue, and her skin too fair even after a couple of years of hard labor at the palace. Yumi catalogued each of these features in her mind, memorizing her enemy intently. Any love that she had carried for this girl had long since been buried, and the pity she had felt for the teen was nothing compared to the hate she felt for this rival.

"Enough, mirror." The image was banished and the mirror returned to its resting state. Yumi closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a strange stillness overcoming her. The relief was immense. Not only would she get rid of her rival, but she would eliminate a loose end that had troubled her mind every so often for two years. It was one of those things that would crop up in her thoughts, but was easily dismissed. Now, she would finally wipe out the Kamiya line and assure Shishio his firm rule over the kingdom. As long as the girl was alive, she could always claim right to succession. . .

It would not take long to find Soujiro; he would be training on a day like today. He trained every day. An assassin who was unfit for his job would soon find himself dead, and no one knew more about death than that amiable young man. More people than she could imagine had seen their end in that smile he wore all the time like a mask.

Deep beneath the castle, in an empty room lit only by oil lamps all over the walls, Soujiro Seta was relaxing his body after a long workout. His breathing was calm and his eyes alert as he noted the door to his practice room open. His mistress, the queen, appeared with a name written across her face. The smiling young man wiped sweat off of his brow and gave a low bow. It seemed he had a job to do.

"My Huntsman, I would charge you to do me a favor. . ."

"Whatever you wish, Your Majesty." The upbeat tone he always spoke in disconcerted Yumi. A killer since the age of ten, at the beginning of his apprenticeship, he was fifteen and as innocent seeming as he had been before his sword had drawn blood.

Yumi conquered the fractional moment of doubt, and continued on to issue her command. "I would have you escort a lady to the edge of our lands. Once there you shall dispose of her as you see fit." She thought a moment, tapping the edge of her painted lips with one finger. "I shall give you a box. When you return I expect to see a heart within it."

"Who am I escorting?" Soujiro did not move, and Yumi thought of how patient he was, how clever. Shishio would have to be careful of this one, and she would remind him of that in their chamber this evening.

"Kaoru Kamiya."

There was a slight downturn of the boy's eyebrows. "I was not aware the dead needed such attention."

"I think you shall find her very much alive, and stinking of the castle horseflesh." The boy nodded with renewed understanding, never asking how Yumi had gotten her information. "Leave tonight."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

In just three days, the time it took to reach the kingdom's closest border, in the east towards the mountains, she would reclaim her title.

***

"It's nothing personal, Your Highness." Soujiro spoke to the now conscious and kicking form of the princess tied securely to the back of his horse. It had been rather convenient for him that she had been so close to the very thing he had needed to strap her too, although he had gotten very damp while rolling her up to disguise her from prying eyes on the road. "I imagine your head is hurting more than you realize, even though I did attempt to knock you out in as merciful a manner as possible."

From under the blanket there were more struggles, muffled words, and then finally a sudden cease of movement and a groan.

"We'll be stopping soon for a little bit of food, and if you promise to be good then I'll untie you for a spell." Soujiro had never been inhumane. This was a rather unusual request as a whole. Usually he never had to spend much time with his victims. He would go in, do his job, and then exit again like a shadow. This face to face business and the three days of travel beforehand seemed all highly irregular. Worst of all, he was dispatching a member of the royal family. That stuck in his mind, turning his stomach as if he had eaten something rotten.

Kaoru did not catch any of the inner torment of her captor, though she looked mad enough to want to cause some more direct torment on her own. The first breath of fresh air she had since she woke up was found in an open field of wild grass. A clearing had been stamped down and a boy she vaguely recognized was building a fire. It had to be late because the light of the day was almost gone, and it was light long past supper in summer.

"I'm going to take out your gag and give you some water. Please don't scream. It will hurt your throat and no one will hear you. We rode hard for at least eight hours." Soujiro took out the gag and while Kaoru did not scream, she also refused to drink anything. The boy gave a long suffering sigh and began to fix himself a meal.

The stars had come into full view and Soujiro had begun to clean up his meal as well as dispose of the portion that Kaoru had refused to eat when she finally spoke.

"Who are you and what is going on?"

"Ah, those are both fair questions, Your Highness. . ."

"Kaoru." She inserted sharply from habit, then bit her lip.

". . .Miss Kaoru." He corrected himself gladly. "I am the royal Huntsman, and I was ordered to take you into the mountains beyond the eastern border and dispose of you. But just because those are my orders doesn't mean we can't be civil."

This kid had to be demented. "How could a kid like you be a. . . let me guess, your master died two years ago or thereabouts?"

"He chose a rather impractical sense of loyalty at an inconvenient moment, this is true. But I assure you I was fully ready to take over and I haven't failed a mission yet." He sounded truly proud. Kaoru tried to get that lump in her throat to go away, but if anything it got bigger.

"You're making a big mistake. You must think I'm the princess, but I'm just a stablehand. If you get me back soon, then no one will know you made a mistake and we can all forget about this. I can understand the mix up since Kaoru was a very popular name in my generation. It fell out of use around the time the princess was born, I'll admit, but. . ."

Soujiro shook his head and laughed. "Miss Kaoru, you are a very bad liar. It doesn't suit you."

So Shishio had finally found her and sent a private executioner to finish the job he had started two years ago. Lying on the ground, Kaoru felt a grim sense of dread clutch at her. The ropes around her arms and legs were tied securely, tight, but not painful in their pressure. The boy seemed sincere. Things looked bad for her.

Not much left for her to lose, she decided to be practical. "I'll take that drink now, if you please." Soujiro was more than happy to oblige.

***

It was useless to struggle (a few attempts to do so only ended in bruises and amused scolding from the Huntsman), so instead Kaoru did what she was good at while they traveled: she listened. Eventually everyone opened up to her; she was that kind of person. Although loud by nature, her brashness was often a protective response for those she cared for. She was a champion of the weak, a soft touch who responded with help for anyone with a sob story. The evils she had seen had only further impressed in her the need for goodness and kindness, even if it was tempered by a healthy amount of self preservation.

What it meant at this time in her life was that she was uniquely suited to get people to trust her, and trust her they did. It was in the middle of the second day that she had gotten Soujiro to open up a little bit about his life and past. They were not happy topics, but then she had never pretended that things were perfect when her father ruled. In response, Kaoru gave back her own story of her anger and her loss. She did everything but plead for a chance to live, to have the time to avenge her family and reclaim her heritage. Soujiro also listened, and when she had finished talked he smiled as he always did and suggested they pitch camp. There was no way she was going to shake his resolve, is what she thought, but until the moment he slipped the knife into her she was going to try.

The mountains were so close, and she vaguely remembered how she had once wanted to visit them. She had stolen a horse and rode for a day towards them, spending the night in a field as scared as a child could be while alone and in the dark. A search party finally found her, dirty and hungry, a day and a half later. It had taken until the morning after she left before anyone noticed she was missing. Her tutor had raised the alarm. She commented on this to the Huntsman, who she was calling Soujiro at his request.

"I'm sorry, Miss Kaoru." She wouldn't let him call her 'Your Highness' even after she had given up and admitted to her identity by no longer insisting to the contrary.

"Why is that?"

For a second she thought his smile faltered, but it could have been a trick of her mind. "Under different circumstances we might have been friends."

There was nothing to say to that, and the night passed in silence, but hope kindled in her heart. If she had become human enough to him, perhaps he would show her the mercy that his other targets never got. He knew that she couldn't lie to save her life, literally, and her sincerity had shaken hard hearts before, knight captains, gardeners, cooks. . . before she had fallen from grace she had had a network of friends on the grounds to make up for the lack of parents. Now, when it counted, she hoped her strength of personality would be enough to save her life.

***

They had been going up a steep slope for some time. Soujiro was walking the horse, and Kaoru was next to him being similarly led by a rope around her wrists. The trees around her smelled like spicy sap and she noted how unusual they were with needles instead of leaves. Everything in this forest seemed sharp, and it didn't seem friendly. It being the probable site of her death could have had something to do with her perception.

When they reached a clearing Soujiro stopped them, tied his horse to a tree and came back to where Kaoru was standing. Running from Soujiro would only seal her fate, force his hand into killing her, and she didn't want that to happen. The urge to bolt was strong, though, stronger than ever now that he was walking towards her with a strange glint in his eyes and an object in his hand.

He stopped in front of her, showing her the ornate wooden box, scenes of strange ritual carved into its dark polished surface. "See this, Miss Kaoru? The clear implication was that I would return with your heart in this box."

Kaoru felt her heartbeat quicken, and her breaths grow shallow. She had never been able to conquer the rush of feeling to her head when she was in danger. It often paralyzed her first before she could think or act. Those long moments in the haystack before she had climbed out came back to her vividly, flames and smoke dancing in her mind's eye.

"It's very pretty, lined with red velvet and everything." He opened it up so she could see it. How could Soujiro be this thoughtlessly cruel to her? "But I rather think that it wouldn't suit your heart at all. Maybe purple. Or blue."

His knife came out of the sheath at his waist after he dropped the box to the forest floor. She closed her eyes and tried not to think of what awaited her on the other side. In a shocked twitch she realized that the swish of the blade had not been followed by pain but by the return of circulation to her hands as the ropes fell away. Soujiro had cut her free.

"I'm not disobeying any orders, mind you." He told her when she was about to hug him and start crying. The corners of her eyes were leaking, and she sniffled. "I am disposing of you as I see fit, and as long as you don't return to the kingdom I can't see any problem with letting you live. Once you get over the mountains, deeply into the next kingdom over, I'm sure you'll find work. It will be harvest season soon enough."

There was another pause, as Kaoru felt her mouth move but no words come out. She wanted to thank him, but there was more guilty relief than anything. It hadn't been false, she really did like this boy, and she was worried about his decision now that she felt sure she was going to live.

"What about you? If I'm ever found. . ."

Kaoru's obvious concern for him made his smile turn up a notch. "Don't be found then." His voice softened. "You can't afford friends with a job like mine, but now that I finally made one it would be a shame to lose you."

"Goodbye, Soujiro." She hugged him once, quickly, before moving in whatever direction up took her.

"Goodbye, Miss Kaoru."

As she passed out of sight up into the dense woods Soujiro thought about how he would have liked to be her Huntsman. Maybe, someday, he would be. Movement caught his eye as a deer quite a distance away moved down the mountain towards a stream they had passed not long ago. Those large childlike eyes of his fell down to the box, open on the ground, its red velvet already making its interior look bloody. He still needed to bring back a heart.

He walked back to his horse and pulled out his crossbow, catching the deer in his sights.

Until that day he was Kaoru's Huntsman. . .


	3. Chapter 3

This had been a horrible idea, Kaoru thought to herself. She had no idea what to do to survive in the mountains. Maybe it seemed to Soujiro that he was setting her free to live her life, but from her perspective he had set her free to die of hunger and cold and subsequently be eaten by all those not so fuzzy forest creatures. If it hadn't been the middle of summer she would have frozen to death after that first night, or so she felt, and to make matters worse at the moment she was as hungry as she was frightened. Kaoru had never had any training about how to survive in a forest, she couldn't tell what was edible and what was poisonous. There were so many strange forest noises, and she didn't know how close any of them were or how desperately hungry. At this point she thought she should make some noises of her own, like calling for help. But who lived in the woods in the middle of nowhere? And would that help turn out to be one of Shishio's loyalists? This close to the border it didn't do to take chances.

Home, even the little bit of security she had carved for herself at the castle, had at least been familiar. The sudden displacement, the sense of being alone, was an emptiness she had never had to deal with. Somehow that was worse than hunger. Besides, she had left Soujiro with a full belly and there was fresh water around so she wasn't thirsty at least. She wouldn't starve for a bit, yet. Hopefully no one had polluted the streams with wash water or household waste, but if she had tasted any soapy residue then that would have meant people. She could deal with foul water if a settlement were near. After a day of climbing, she was nearing the summit, tired as she was, and once she was there she could try to spot chimney smoke, or rooftops, or anything that would give her the energy to move on.

There was no turning back. Fine, then. The stubborn set of her jaw overruled her quivering lip and on she marched, getting dirtier and sweatier but glad for the goal of getting to the top of the mountain. She hadn't survived neglect, a fire, and an attempted assassination to be overcome by trees. To remind herself that she had enough spirit to come out of this alive she began to tell herself those things that had hardened her when her father hadn't been able to see her, so sorry, try again next week, your highness. . .A princess is strong, a princess is firm in her resolve. . .

An animal howled not too far away.

. . . a princess can run pretty fast when she had a mind to, even uphill.

The sky got dark far earlier than it should have, Kaoru thought as she continued going up. The snatches of sleep she had gotten were not satisfying but she was aware enough to realize that the encroaching darkness was not the result of a setting sun but of rolling clouds above the high forest canopy. It started out as an annoyance because she had hoped to see the sunset to realign herself going east. Then the thunder began and she experienced a twinge of acute irritation.

The rain started out in droplets, fat and warm dollops on top of her head as it oozed down the pine tree needles. At first it was welcoming, even refreshing, and the forest was filled with a delicious odor. Soon enough she wished it would stop once her clothes were soaked and her body shivering against the wind that blew ferociously through the trees. This was no little summer shower but a full on torrential downpour, and Kaoru was starting to feel too weak and tired to do much but be miserable and keep moving whatever direction up took her.

It appeared that the sun had set behind the clouds because it was getting dark again, and Kaoru tried to remind herself that rain in summer was a blessing and it kept things green and alive.

"Stop it! Just stop it already! Haven't you done enough to me!" She screamed at the sky, at the castle behind her, at nothing at all. There was a clearing ahead and she pushed herself forward to it. Now in the open, rain drenched anything on her that wasn't already dirty and wet. This clearing wasn't natural, but merely where a couple trees had been chopped down. That meant people to her tired mind, and any signs of people were good ones. Suspicions forgotten, she had convinced herself that simple mountain folk would welcome a visitor. There was still a slim muddy path down which water was running. This was where they had dragged the logs. Kaoru only stumbled twice in the darkening wood as she followed that thin line of mud like a lifeline.

Eventually it was too dark to see it so she continued going up since that was not only what she wished to do, but it was where the trail had led. At some point she found herself out in the open again, and then she was nearly tumbling down trying to keep her footing on slick ground. Had she come over the mountain already? She must have taken a wrong turn of some sort and ended up more on the side, and without the sun to reposition herself she might have even wandered back into her kingdom. . .

These were worries for another day; she saw light ahead of her. Anything seemed bright in this darkness, and she held out her hands so that the trees scraped her palms instead of her face. There was a light, it could be a cabin, and surely no one would deny a lost girl help and maybe a little food. At the thought her belly sprang to life again, reminding her that she hadn't eaten for a couple days. Even the needles on the trees were beginning to look good. They smelled so sweet, she had almost convinced herself a couple times she should give them a try.

It took ages to get to the large cottage, but Kaoru felt like her life couldn't get any more miserable and time ceased to mean anything to her. Numbed from the cold water from above, she bashed her hands onto the thick wood door, screaming to be let in at the top of her lungs. The rain was everywhere, and she thought it might drown her with how much of it climbed into her lungs as she yelled. While the coughing fit didn't do her in, it did put her head closer to the door so that when it opened outwards and not in like she had thought it would, it knocked into her hard enough to rattle her brains.

"Finally. . ." She said with a gasp as she collapsed onto the ground beyond the door. It wasn't delicate enough to be a faint, but she was unconscious just the same.

***

". . . who 'gets lost' this far up the mountain?" It was a nice voice, cultured and confident, but the equal parts disgust and suspicion didn't ingratiate it to her.

"She collapsed at our door. I think we should give her some time to recover before we kick her out again." This voice was a little deeper, slower and warmer somehow. She thought about cracking open her eyes to see who it belonged to but it would be better to play possum until she understood more about where she was.

"All I know is that she's in my bed, and I didn't appreciate having to sleep in the chair downstairs last night. Plus, she's covered in mud. Gross." This one sounded younger.

"Don't whine, Yahiko, you do laundry so rarely we thought you'd never notice the difference."

"Shut up, Sano."

"Both of you be quiet." Footsteps brought a form near her. "You might as well let them know you're awake."

She cracked her eyes open into a squint that quickly widened when the view turned out to be fair. Kaoru looked up into a pair of glasses and a shock of white hair. Pain throbbed through her head and she grimaced and coughed. The man who had been leaning over her pulled back quickly as soon as they made eye contact and marched out of the room.

"Man, what got into his craw?" The owner of the warm voice was a tall man with as equally unbelievably styled brown hair as the white haired man. A lazy smile greeted her and he stuck hands into pockets as he approached her supine form. "I'm Sano. . . well, Sanosuke, but Sano's more friendly isn't it?"

There was a kid looking daggers at her behind the man, although he didn't look like he'd be a kid for much longer. The teen years were awkward, and she should know being not out of hers quite yet. He had unkempt spiky black hair that fell over his face. This must be the owner of the bed who didn't wash his sheets.

"That's Yahiko. Don't mind him. Being a brat comes as naturally to him as breathing."

"You're going to wake up with spiders on your face one of these days." The kid tried to look threatening.

Sano turned back to face the probable teen who was practically sparking with the force of his enmity. "And you're going to find yourself doing twice as many exercises when I tell Aoshi about those little trips of yours to town to see that cute little waitress. . . what was her name again. . .?"

"You. . .I. . . she. . . you stay out of my business!" The boy had blushed bright red as he sputtered and he followed the white haired man in choosing exile from the room.

Kaoru was entirely at a loss to whatever dynamic these men shared. They acted like family, but none of them resembled one another. Maybe they were half siblings? But they were young enough so that their father and mother could still be alive. Curious. Adoption? Many families were broken when Shishio appeared on the scene.

"Now, little missy, I've got some questions for you. Before Angsty and Shorty left us we were discussing just how you ended up here." He was sitting at the foot of the bed, and Kaoru felt the sympathy radiating from him. Concern from another human being was almost too much for her to face after all the emotional ups and downs of the past days. "The nearest village is miles down the mountain. You get whipped one too many times by your boss and think that hopping the border was a better choice? Because it's another day up at least over the top, and you looked about ready to die at our doorstep."

"I—" She cut herself off even before some outlandish story could leave her lips. Soujiro had told her she was a terrible liar, something she already knew. "I had to leave. I didn't have a choice. Now I'm stuck and can't go back yet."

Sano rubbed his chin. "Well, if a border crossing was all you wanted, you got it, not that it matters much up here. Maybe you'll be more willing to talk after a little breakfast, eh? I'm starved, and whenever Aoshi is gone then we make Yahiko do the cooking. It's probably going to be overcooked eggs and burnt bacon, like usual."

Anything sounded good at this point. She leaned over and put a hand on Sano's arm, catching his attention away from his mental wanderings on breakfast. "Thank you." He got a look in his eyes, a funny one, before he focused on the ceiling in a fixed manner and Kaoru tried to think of what it could be that was so interesting. Then she felt the cold on her skin, and took a quick confirming peek beneath the covers.

Naked. These men had undressed her and she was naked. The pink of embarrassment on her cheeks was supplanted quickly by the red of pure rage. "Out! Lecher! Get out right now!" She threw the pillow at him, hard, as he backed out of the room. That was followed by anything else in reach, which consisted mostly of more pillows. She stopped when she found a dagger underneath everything. She wasn't that out of control, only pissed off.

"Look, I wasn't the one who. . . we had to do something. . . stop it! Hey! You were freez—oof, and Enishi was the one that finally. . . augh! Fine! You're nuts, girlie!" Sano closed the door behind him and Kaoru tried to get a grasp on her anger. She had to go back down sometime, face her lecherous saviors, and try to get some food. That burst of temper had been nearly all the energy she had left. And her head was reminding her of something having to do with throbbing pain. So long as she wrapped the blanket around herself it wouldn't be too indecent when she finally felt good enough to go downstairs.

Now that she was alone she had time to look around at this room, get her bearings, and try to get a handle on this headache before she went down and talked to people she hardly knew. Her clothes were in a soggy pile by the foot of the bed. They were ripped, muddy, and stuck together in a way that made her loathe putting them back on. Instead, she grabbed her belt and securely tied the blanket around her as a makeshift dress. That would have to do for now.

She had been lying in a bed that had been placed at one corner of this large room. There were four beds in total, one in each corner, and she suspected that she had met three of the house's four occupants. Yahiko's bed, where she had been, did look to be a mess as did his corner of the room. There were wooden practice swords and knife sharpening implements as well as pieces of paper with notes on them strewn about. Only one other bed looked as messy, but it was covered in old clothes rather than stuff. Both of those corners reeked of male scents that Kaoru didn't want to question. It seemed others needed to do their laundry as well.

The third bed looked neater, cleaner, but slept in. The covers had been hastily thrown back over it. There was a leather journal on a table at the head of the bed, and a glass of water. Kaoru thought about drinking the water, but the glass didn't look very clean or the water very fresh. She wandered over to the last bed and found it spotless, perfectly turned out with precision not unlike that which the palace staff used to employ on her bed when she had been a princess. Everything was clean in this corner, no object lying out in the open.

Between Yahiko's bed and the not quite so messy bed there was a mirror and Kaoru glanced in it on her way to the door. The first thing she did upon seeing her reflection was stop walking to the door. No one should see her like this! She was a mess! There was mud in her hair and on her face, and it had all caked and dried on, leaving the definite impression that she was wearing a strange uneven mask. . . not unlike a raccoon. The rest of her body wasn't so bad, probably saved by her clothing that had scraped off most of the mud upon removal.

Using the underside of her filthy shirt and that stale glass of water, Kaoru improved upon her appearance. Most of the mud shook out of her hair, and other than brushing the tangles that was the best she could manage at the moment in that quarter. With a clean face, and a dry improvised dress she felt like she could face her new acquaintances. Kaoru didn't think of herself as being particularly vain, but she knew she was pretty and that looking bad would drag down on her self esteem. Anything she could do to make herself feel better at a time like this. . .

_At a time like what?_

Well, she was banished entirely from the life she had been living. Someone, ok, the king of what should have been her land wanted her dead. The only friend she had in the world besides the old man who ran the stables she couldn't go back to was the boy who had originally been sent to kill her. And some stranger had seen her naked. Scratch that, several strangers had probably seen her naked. Hm, and there seemed to be a rather tender bump on her head from getting whacked by the door last night.

The smell of bacon wafted up to her, overcoming the gamey odor of her dirty body and the room itself. That meaty aroma was heavenly and she wanted some of that pork more than she had wanted anything in living memory. So what if she was stranded and nearly helpless? She would be fed and she was dry, and in the long run that seemed to matter a lot more.

***

That stupid ugly girl, she was going to ruin everything. Yahiko hated outsiders, he didn't trust them. He had been told to not trust them, because even the most innocent looking person could easily be a spy or assassin of Shishio's. This girl was as helpless before them as a babe, carrying nothing and half starved. Didn't that make her doubly suspicious? He wished Enishi would back him up on this, but while the man was eagerly suggesting that she be turned away, there was a haunted look in his eyes that signaled another one of his 'episodes' was not far away. If not for his clear mental instability he might have fought more successfully for leadership of their little group, and if he had been the leader then there would have been no argument about what to do with the girl.

Yahiko took down the pan from where it hung on a hook in the kitchen area and scraped off some of the old burnt bits before plopping in some meat to cook. Enishi had finished firing up the wood stove and Yahiko nodded to him. The man barely looked at him.

"We don't even know her name, and Sano is ready to practically adopt her, like some lost dog!" Yahiko tried to spur Enishi into a response. He looked like he was seconds away from being in a walking coma.

". . . Tomoe. . ."

"What did you say?" Yahiko had divided his attention to the bacon which would begin to cook soon. The burnt bits that he had not been able to scrape off started to smoke a tad, but this was the natural way of things in the house. The black spot on the ceiling was a testament to nearly two years of neglectful cooking and cleaning habits.

Enishi snapped back to reality. "Sano has a bad habit of thinking that resources at his disposal are endless. He was never a planner. The girl isn't a stray animal and we can't keep her no matter how bad he feels for her."

There was a screech and some rather animated yelling upstairs. A pillow landed in their field of vision, and Enishi and Yahiko tried to catch snatches of what the woman was complaining about or what Sano was trying to say in return. Around the time that they considered going up to help their colleague against the hellcat they had left him with, Sano appeared downstairs shaking his head.

"Should have left her in those rags she had on, Enishi. She'll be out for your blood next."

"If a mudspeckled runaway can defeat you then we're in trouble. Should I go get my sword?" Enishi deflected the conversation away from his actions last night with sarcasm. Yahiko laughed, glad that Sano was getting picked at after what he had said upstairs. So what if he visited Tsubame every once in a while. If he had to go into town for supplies anyway, then talking to the locals was good for their image. People thought they were weird as it was. Though Tsubame was so kind and didn't even treat him like an outsider. . .

Smoke billowed, making him cough. "Yahiko. Mind your task." Enishi didn't have to yell, from that tone Yahiko could tell he was going to be doing calisthenics in the mud outside for a long time before his regular training began for the day.

"When is Aoshi getting back?"

"Sometime this evening. It won't be a problem of finding work but rather who to agree to do work for." Enishi looked down at the brownish bacon pieces that Yahiko set on the table and put a piece on his plate without even a grimace. His ability to eat gross food had always amazed Sano, but then Enishi had always had a warrior's attitude. You ate when you could because who knew when you would eat again. Sano would have liked to enjoy some of the finer things, more quality than quantity. But if quantity was all that was available. . .

Sano picked out the least burned piece among the pile and listened to the eggs sizzle. "That conscription notice. . . Shishio is going to cause a famine this winter if he keeps dipping into his labor force."

Pushing up his glasses, Enishi grabbed another piece of bacon. "I think he's counting on grain grown by our neighbors to supply his troops."

"That would cost a fortune!"

"Won't matter if all that money he pays over becomes his again when he marches on them next spring. Makes sense to me. It's what I would do if I were him. With a war machine this large he has no choice but to keep moving forward."

They all took a moment to digest that information along with the overcooked meat when Kaoru finally joined them for breakfast. It was only by luck that Yahiko didn't drop a hot egg onto Sano's lap, and rather onto the tabletop instead.

"Am I too late? I smelled bacon."

Last night, in trousers, a shirt and leather vest, covered in mud, Kaoru hadn't been much to look at. Enishi hadn't even thought much about undressing her because she had seemed more wreck than person. It was true that she had been shivering and cold and staying in those clothes would have been a bad idea. At the time it had been a practical decision and he had approached it like any mission he had been sent on in the past. Now, he became fully aware that what he had touched and viewed was a flesh and blood woman, vibrantly beautiful. Sano, who had an eye for the ladies as well, was winking at Enishi in a way that made the younger man turn away with disdain.

While the mirror had not lied, and Kaoru was indeed the most beautiful woman who had been in the kingdom, it had been working more on potential than anything. In the stables she had been uncommonly pretty, but that was while covered from head to toe in grimy clothes, hair tied in a viciously tight bun, sweating and yelling at people, and more often than not also as dirty as if she had fallen into a mud puddle face first anyway. That stablehand was a far cry from the vision that had wandered downstairs in a blanket and belt.

It was even more shocking because Kaoru was almost entirely unaware how stunning she actually was. Sure she had been a cute kid and a pretty adolescent, but everyone in her life had made a point of ignoring her for the sake of her father and she had assumed that she was simply unremarkable. That had been fine by her. She wasn't trying to compete with the many beauties in the nobility. There had been no young men courting her, telling her that her hair was like the midnight sky, or that her lips were like blushing pink rose petals. For two years the only compliments she could expect on her appearance were when the old man who ran the stables told her she was growing up to be just as pretty as her mother, her real one. Those moments made Kaoru glow inside for she remembered those serene paintings in the long palace gallery. Those paintings were probably burned and gone now, maybe she was all that would be left of her mother after all.

"Have an egg." Sano handed Kaoru a plate and she nearly swallowed it whole in front of them before grabbing a handful of bacon, burned as it was, and scarfing that down too. Finally, the first pangs of her gluttonous hunger satisfied, she saw that she was being stared at rather oddly and mistook the reason for the stares.

"I haven't eaten in several days so you can stop looking at me like I've grown two heads." A calm voice in her head asserted that she should be at least a little bit grateful since they did take her in and they were feeding her. Tempering her voice, she bestowed them with a smile that made Sano and Enishi's eyes bug and Yahiko forcibly turn away to stop from blushing. "Thank you so much for the food. It tastes, umm, unique. What did you put on it?"

Enishi was the first to recover. "Salt and pepper." He stood up and smiled in a vaguely unfriendly way. "Yahiko, finish up with the food and meet me outside. You have a lot of practice to get through today to make up for what you missed yesterday."

"But it was raining! I could barely move without slipping in the mud!" Yahiko whined but Kaoru could see he was moving quickly. Training must be something that he liked to do.

The door slammed behind Enishi and Yahiko dumped the rest of the food on a plate in the middle of the table in various states of well done before running upstairs to get something. After some thumping and swearing he ran back down the stairs and followed Enishi with another slam of the front door. Kaoru assumed now that it had been built thick just to withstand the rough treatment it got from the inhabitants of this cottage.

"You're not going to start throwing things at me again, are you? There's knives and things on the table, and I'm the one who has to do the dishes today. . . . supposedly."

Once the original flush of her anger was gone, Kaoru rarely relapsed without giving it a bit of thought. "I recognize that getting me out of those clothes was probably for the best. Even if I'm not happy about it."

"Yeah, well. . ." Sano let the sentence trail off and took a bite of food to prevent himself from having to answer her in any real manner. Her eyes were glowing in that way that promised lumps to his head if he did anything wrong. Of course, her attack came from an entirely unexpected area.

"So is Yahiko your little brother, or your son?"

Sano began to hack violently as he attempted to dislodge all of the egg from his windpipe. He would be tasting eggs all day when he cleared his throat. And these were Yahiko's eggs. It would have been kinder if she had just thrown something.


	4. Chapter 4

"So then. . ."

"So then I told her that he wasn't my son, no way."

Enishi looked at Sano in that way that sometimes reminded Sano of this one loan shark he had been, er, friends with. Just as long as he didn't start smiling. Enishi was creepy as all hell when he smiled.

"Sagara." Enishi tried to be calm, but he could tell that this conversation was already going to go in a way he wasn't going to be happy with. "Did you let that girl think that we are all _brothers?_"

"Ha, ah, maybe not in those exact words. But um, effectively, sure. It's better than the truth. The truth is a lot less easy to believe and it's just a little white lie."

Was it Sano's imagination, or was there a vein throbbing near Enishi's forehead. "So how did you explain that I have _white_ hair and light eyes? And might I remind you that while you and the kid may have at least some surface resemblance that Aoshi looks _entirely_ different from the rest of us. What of our different family names? Did you even think before you spoke?"

"Of course I did." Sano had backed away a step or two. On the same side or no, Enishi still scared him sometimes. Aoshi had made a point to take Sano aside once and warn him about Yukishiro. He hadn't been part of the palace guard and he might not be able to be trusted entirely. In fact, Aoshi had said, Yukishiro had probably been the head of some shady business projects before Shishio took everything over. The odds were good that he had been a criminal. Allies did not mean friends. Moments like this drove that point home for Sano. "And she never asked what our last name was."

"Then what, and you had better have a really good explanation for this, happened to our parents?"

Sano had had enough of this third degree crap. Aoshi was going to do the exact same thing when he got back tonight. While Enishi was scary, Aoshi was still his captain and that made it marginally worse. He wasn't sure why that was.

"They're dead. Shishio, disease, accident, it doesn't matter. So long as she doesn't ask for any particulars we're fine. And as for the last name thing, uh, I don't know. You can tell her that they're our middle names or something and we'll just make up a last name later." Sano waved a hand absently, as if he were not at all worried about this. "What's your problem, you've been wound up tight since she got here."

Enishi picked up his half of the load of wood they were bringing back to the cabin. It was warm out, even under the shelter of the trees, and both men were sweating heavily. They had stopped to rest because it was a long walk with a weighty load of wood and because they were conveniently alone and could chat.

"She reminds me of someone." Was all Enishi supplied before he left Sano behind quickly.

***

Kaoru looked around in mild to moderate shock. The house, in all its glory, was a pigsty. In many ways it was worse than a sty, because the pigs had always looked surprisingly pink and clean in all that straw and mud. It was certainly much dirtier than the stables, and smelled a heck of a lot worse too. If these boys' parents had died around when Shishio came to power then that would probably date the dust as two years thick. You'd think one of them would get married or something in the mean time. If for nothing else than to have someone to cook and clean. She thought Enishi at least would be mercenary enough for that from what she'd seen of him. Some moldy places on the floor looked like it might conquer the south side of the house given another year. Kaoru shuddered and grabbed her dingy clothes from the upstairs.

Outside, in back of the house, she had found a pump and put her back into it to get some water. She hadn't been able to find any soap, but she still tried to wash her clothes as she could. The mud came off but it didn't change the fact that the clothes were both old and ugly. Even the blanket she was currently wearing was made of finer fabric. Sure she had managed to plead with the palace seamstresses to add some velvet patches on the elbows and knees to make it nicer to move around in during the day, but those were worn and ruined in nearly every case. If it were possible to do some work and somehow pay for the fabric she needed to make clothes, then that would be something. But an impulse inside of her, as much as she needed help, made her not want to ask for even the slightest bit of charity. She had to be strong in the face of adversity and other encouraging clichés. Kaoru was, before anything else, a princess with the pride (though perhaps not the self confidence) to go with it.

With a sigh she dropped the sodden garments. It was hard to keep hold of your pride when you couldn't even take care of yourself. Hard breathing alerted to her that someone was coming before she even saw them turn round the side of the house. Enishi startled her by appearing at a near run with a load of firewood that would have broken her back if she had even lifted it. And she wasn't all that weak.

"Oh," He said, sweat pouring down his face now that it was approaching noon and the temperature was rising in addition to his exercise. "It's you. You're still here."

She didn't appreciate being talked to like that. It evoked images of her past in ways she couldn't explain to him even if she wanted to. More than a decade of being unwanted had left her with what her second tutor had called 'abandonment issues'. He had been a weird one, leaving after a short time around her tenth birthday. The irony had escaped her at that age.

"Yes I'm still here. I don't have anywhere else to go, and no clothes either it seems." For some reason this caused the white haired man to flinch slightly and Kaoru, unfortunately, correctly interpreted why. "I suppose I have you to thank for some of these torn seams." She shook her wet shirt at him, casting droplets in a wide arc.

"I did what needed to be done and you should be grateful to me that I had the sense to get you out of those clothes before you caught a fever." There was no sense of him being intimidated by her. The boy gaped at her and Sano deferred to her, but Enishi was different from either of them in a way that she couldn't fully grasp. "You should act more delicate, or at least more polite. Your behavior thus far. . ."

Kaoru didn't know how he managed to flawlessly push every emotional trigger inside of her. "You have no right to dictate my behavior, sir. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am? I. . . er. . ." She had only just managed to catch it. Going around announcing her presence was just about as stupid as could be. But something about her last statement had shaken him.

"I think—I know—that you are just some runaway who didn't have sense enough to use a major road to cross the border and if you know what's best for you you'll keep going before you get yourself in trouble here." He was eerily calm as he spoke, with an edge that gave her chills. "And we don't need any trouble."

"I am not talking to you anymore." She refused to allow herself to be intimidated. "Where is Sano? I have something to ask him."

As if she had summoned him by mentioning his name, the affable man appeared with a similarly large pile of wood and dumped it on the pile before looking at the man and woman glaring at one another. Being the pleasant and friendly person he was, he took one moment to test out the feeling in the air and decided that inside the house was the best place to be. He had made it two steps towards the door when Kaoru broke her staring match with Enishi and yelled over to him.

"Wait! I have something to ask you!"

Enishi began to stalk off, but not before giving a parting shot over his shoulder than made Sano roll his eyes. "Yes, Sano is just full of all sorts of helpful answers today."

Kaoru thought about sticking out her tongue at him as he went in search of Yahiko to direct his training more, but decided to keep her dignity. There were more important things, like making sure she got some new clothes.

"So, Sano, I guess it's been hard on all of you since your parents died. With Yahiko so young it couldn't have been long ago. . ."

"Uh," Sano seemed miserable for some reason, and Kaoru thought it was all the bad memories she was conjuring up. She suddenly felt terrible for bringing up her favor this way. "Yeah."

Still, she had brought it up so she might as well forge ahead. She had always prided herself on her stubborn persistence. "Things here obviously have not experienced a woman's touch in some time. Like in the area of dusting."

"Dusting?" Her sudden new topic totally confused Sano.

"Yes, dusting, maybe a good scrubbing, cleaning out the ashes in the fireplace, and most of the dishes look cracked at best and crusty with old food bits. . . I can go on but I think maybe you understand my meaning." She took a deep breath and took the plunge. "If you haven't gotten rid of all your mother's clothing then I would be glad to clean things up for some old clothes. It would take me a week at most, especially if I had to alter any of the clothes, but you would all appreciate the added comfort. And if you send me off with a little food then I'll even do laundry."

This was a big chance she was taking. Other than watching the palace maids, of which there was practically a legion, she was not really sure how to do anything but the most basic of chores around a house. If she had to polish silver, she might be in more familiar territory, but if she just scrubbed things and organized then how would they know if she were a cleaning maven or not?

"I don't know. . ."

Kaoru turned on her charm, or what she could. It was helped along greatly by her revealed beauty and Sano tried not to goggle at her as her eyes grew large and wistful. "I don't have anyone else to turn to. This way I can be useful and you can get rid of me without any worry or guilt. I'll figure things out on my own, but until then you can help me, can't you?"

It never crossed her mind for a minute that he would say no. And maybe if things had been solely up to him, then her mind could have been at rest right there. Under pressure, Sano did the thing he had always done before on non-combat decisions like these, he looked up on the chain of command.

"We'll have to wait until Aoshi gets home. He's our, uh, oldest brother. What he says goes around here."

"There's another brother? Your family is so big, how lucky you are." They were lucky, for this many young men to be together in a family still was rare these days. "When does your other brother get home?"

"Aoshi? Well, he'll be back before dark, I think."

Kaoru, seeing an opportunity, went for it. "Then I'll start cleaning anyway and make myself busy until he gets home. Nothing wrong with that, right? It's the least I can do to thank you anyway, for saving me." Someday, she told herself, it won't be about scraping by with doing small favors and menial jobs. Someday she would find people who could really help her. Someday she would find her champions.

Until then she had some cleaning to do. She would have rolled up her sleeves if her blanket-dress had had any.

***

It had been two years since she had been in a dress of any sort, and Kaoru found that she hadn't properly remembered how restraining it could be if a person were trying to work at something with any sort of vigor. The cleaning was going, for lack of a better term 'infuriatingly'. It was an ungainly thought, a word pulled straight out of the pages of her last etiquette tutor's common list of phrases, but accurate for the moment.

Some of it was the headache that reasserted itself as the heat in the house climbed and her blood pumped hard from the exercise she was getting. She had been nearly concussed last night so this was no surprise. Kaoru gritted her teeth and ignored the pain.

Some of it had been the extreme hopelessness of not knowing where to begin. She had never been a housecleaner, and in fact seemed to have problems with many of the practical arts that she was vaguely aware went into a house. Even her sewing was a little suspect, despite her assurance that she could alter any clothes that Sano could provide. But Kaoru was never one to doubt herself and knew that whatever she told herself she could do she could probably manage it at some level.

But this was no mere two years of grime, it was two years of lived in grime which meant it was rubbed into every surface. A tabletop that she had thought was some sort of dark grained wood turned out to be light after she scrubbed it for an hour, just to have a clean surface on which to put other clean things. It was easy to attack the cupboards, laying out all the varied food items, tools, and other miscellany that had somehow made it in. Then, she scrubbed the spaces out with soapy water and an old crusty towel she had found in the back of one high up cupboard.

By the time it was evening that was all she had managed to do, as well as put everything back in their place according to the order she thought made the most sense. No one had tried to come in since she had had her little talk with Sano, and she assumed he had warned everyone of what she was doing. Then again, if he had told the other two she wouldn't have been surprised if Enishi had charged in and demanded she butt out of their lives. No, more likely everyone was simply avoiding her.

When the sky began to darken, she started to get a little apprehensive. Sweat poured off of her in droplets and her hair hung limp and damp against her head and shoulders, but she had organized the cupboards and all the dishes. The dishes weren't clean yet, but they were all in a passable sense of order. Cleaning those was the tomorrow's order of business. Then she could work on the stove and move out from there, assuming she was still here.

Where was this Aoshi person?

Kaoru's mind was quickly driven away from speculating when all three of the men practically burst into the house. Yahiko wandered over, no doubt in charge of making the next meal, while Sano and Enishi settled into some broken down chairs in the corner where the fireplace sat and proceeded to say nothing and do nothing. She wondered why none of them were looking at her, pointedly, when Yahiko began to complain before Kaoru could finish forming the way she was going to scold them.

"Where's the big wooden spoon?"

"In that can along with the other big wooden utensils." She pointed and Yahiko looked at her, seemed to go into a daze for a moment and then snap out of it to grumble and grab the spoon he wanted.

Kaoru started to wander over to Enishi and Sano when the next question came. "Where did all the oil go?" She turned around and walked back over, only to point emphatically at the little shelf near the stove where the oil was. Right next to the spice rack she had found stuffed away. There had been a peg for it on the side of a cabinet and everything.

Her peace was short lived. "I can't find the—" This time she didn't wait for the complaint to come.

"Look, should I cook dinner? Since you can't seem to navigate the kitchen area anymore?" Kaoru had no idea how to cook. Food came out of kitchens mysteriously and then was deposited in her belly. The finer points of actually cooking substances were only things she had seen in snatches over the two years in which begging for food in the palace kitchen in winter was one of the main sports of the poor and the underfed worker.

"Go ahead. It'll take me forever because of your _cleaning_." The last word sounded dirty in his mouth but she couldn't scold him for a rude inflection.

Yahiko wandered over to the other two and then began to talk in low tones with them. She ignored them, guessing she was the main subject and that today just wasn't promising in general. Tomorrow might be better. Even tonight held the mysterious fourth brother who could be the one to save her or to cast her out to certain death from exposure or hunger. Her thoughts had taken on a dramatic edge as she heated up a pot of water. Tonight's dinner was going to be meat and potatoes because she knew you boiled potatoes and it was easy to fry meat because she had seen Yahiko do it this morning. Dinner solved.

It was pretty dark by the time she finished cooking. Boiling water had taken a lot longer than she thought it would. Next time she would just cook the potatoes in with the meat. Maybe that would be faster. As it was, she had overcooked the meat and undercooked the potatoes. To make up for it she had dumped lots of spices over everything. It wasn't unpalatable as a supper, but it sure wasn't gourmet either.

The men sat there poking at their shriveled meat and still thinking it was better than nothing when Enishi suddenly looked very intently at the door. The knob turned and rattled a bit as the door swung out. From outside a serious looking man strode in. She didn't need any process of elimination to tell that this was the one among them who kept his bed more neat and precise than any palace maid could. It exuded from him, the need to be in control and calm. The way Enishi tensed, she noticed smugly that he wasn't the type who wanted to take anyone's orders but his own and the return of the brother in charge was something that displeased him. The other two at the table looked relieved.

"Aoshi, glad you're back. You're just in time for dinner. . . lucky you. . ." Sano managed to not sound sarcastic at that last part, and Kaoru thanked him for it mentally.

"Who is that?"

He certainly was to the point, Kaoru thought. The three men looked at one another vying to see who would begin. Naturally, it would be Yahiko who felt the need to start things off with a complaint about how she had crashed into their lives and had now rearranged the kitchen in some strange attempt at sabotage. Aoshi looked at him steadily and Yahiko fell silent as if he had had the wind knocked out of him. Sano tried next since Enishi was proving to be a study in patience. This version was a little more chronological, but not particularly detailed and ended with her request of him earlier for shelter in exchange for housecleaning and cooking. Kaoru found herself raising an eyebrow at the part about cooking. Yahiko must be truly terrible at such things if even this misconceived dinner prompted a promotion to housecleaner and cook.

After Sano's version Aoshi regarded Enishi with his stoic gaze and Enishi simply stared back, that familiar smirk playing on his lips. It must be an unconscious facial tick, or something, because she could have sworn he was mightily displeased to have Aoshi back. She couldn't hide her own emotions very well, and knew it. Then again, normal families talked to one another long enough to have arguments, and he may have been dealing with these issues for years. Kaoru had heard from people that normal families did that. Normal families didn't have the opportunity to avoid one another for months on end in large castles. While it looked as though Aoshi and Enishi were ready to hold their position staring at one another until Ragnorak, Kaoru wasn't about to let things go without her say.

"Excuse me, but don't you want to hear from me?" She stood up, leaning on the table as if to support herself, but really trying to look at least a little bit intimidating. "I know that I'm intruding on your lives but I'd rather speak before you all sentence me."

Aoshi nodded his head, still listening. Kaoru felt herself tear up a little as she recapped her story of having to leave and getting lost in the woods, but pushed past it and tried to make her need clear. "I was driven from where I lived without being given any choice in the matter. If it were up to me I wouldn't be asking for your help because I'd like to think I'm the kind of person who can take care of herself. But right now I can't and all I'm asking from you is the chance to pull myself together and make a clean start. In return I'll cook and clean for you, yes, but I'll be gone as soon as I possibly can."

In a movement so slow Kaoru thought a glacier could surpass him, Aoshi tilted his head to the side and took a deep breath. "I'll tell you my decision in the morning. Yahiko, make up a bed down here near the fireplace. I need to sleep and there is much to discuss tomorrow in addition to the matter of. . . what's your name?"

Finally someone had asked, but now that the moment was here she was sure that they were all too distracted by other things than to notice how unusual her name was. "Kaoru."

". . . the matter of Kaoru." Aoshi moved to get some food while Yahiko grumbled and began to go about the task set to him. Enishi had mysteriously disappeared and Sano was asking Aoshi how things in town were only to get short and concise answers. All this meant was that Sano had to ask more questions. Kaoru took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. They wouldn't turn a helpless girl out into the woods. She was sure of it. Well, mostly sure. Even odds. Maybe she should ask if she could at least keep the blanket.

***

Aoshi found Enishi at his exercises as soon as he was reasonably sure the others were in bed or asleep. Something about the girl bothered him, but didn't alarm him, and he wanted a second opinion from the ex-criminal about what sort of person this girl was. Yukishiro was acting uncharacteristically antagonistic around her. There had always been a low level of dissatisfied irritation with the current situation from him, but this woman was bringing out far more extreme and varied reactions if Sano's report was correct. If she were a spy, then undoubtedly Enishi would have found something out or sensed something after a full day of her. The girl's unusual beauty was already cause for suspicion, but beyond that she hadn't displayed any extraordinary traits. In fact, her cooking was rather on par with Yahiko's.

Even though he did not announce his presence, the subtle change in stance to anticipate an attack from behind told Aoshi that Enishi had sensed him. Yukishiro's nerves were always uncannily sharp. He would have made a great officer in the King's Army. . . what a waste.

"What of the girl?"

There was no halt to Enishi's smooth movements, the long sword flashing and his limbs gliding from one position to the next. "She's just a pretty girl. I assume she tried to steal a horse or something from her employer, because her clothes smelled of a stable, and got exiled. Pretty lenient for such a crime, really. Nothing else makes sense."

"She isn't lying?"

"Her tells are too obvious. I asked her about her experience as a housekeeper over dinner, and she tried to lie before she admitted to knowing nothing. I doubt she's capable of lying." Enishi dropped what he was doing in the middle of a complicated slashing move. "She's no threat to us."

"Then you think she should stay."

The glasses that were sliding down his nose were firmly replaced with a firm shove from one finger on his hand before Enishi replied. "I didn't say that."

"So she should go?"

There was a pregnant pause where the sounds of the wood at night rushed in on them now that they were both still. "I didn't say that either."

***

Kaoru was awake when Aoshi slipped out, but she didn't notice him at all. She was too intent on her own tense near misery. Naturally she would have to wait in suspense while they all probably talked about her upstairs. What could they be saying? She tried to imagine it and was simply left with the feeling like she should storm up there and yell at them until they relented. That was the leftover spoiled kid in her speaking. So much of her was still childish in some ways. There was never a more terrifying time to think about your own level of competence when you were faced with the immediate prospect of being, well, thrust out to fend for yourself.

The thought of what tomorrow might bring filled her with enough apprehension to keep her awake. Absently she noted how greasy the window was where it wasn't crusted with dirt and her mouth pulled into an involuntary smile. It was no lie that they could use someone to clean. At least she knew that they would be living in squalor if they turned her out and it would be their own fault.

Every muscle was tensed in her body, each nerve screaming and awake, so later on when Enishi came back in from his exercises she actually heard him walking through the house.

"Hello?" She hadn't heard anyone leave and she looked by the fire for where the poker lay just in case the scream she was ready to belt out didn't wake up the men upstairs. They could very well be heavy sleepers.

Familiar glasses glinted in the light of the candle she still had lit in her corner, sadly melted into a near puddle. Her hand stopped creeping towards the solid metal poker, but didn't recede from it either.

"Why are you down here?"

He looked at her as if she had no right to question him, but in the end he satisfied her curiosity. "I was out. You don't have to look so frightened. If I was going to harm you it would have happened already. I'm not a monster." He let the corner of his mouth pull up.

"Well it's not like you've given me much to have faith in." She was annoyed at having been frightened by him, and her already high strung mood was taking its toll on her patience. At least it was something she could release some of that pent up tension on. "You've been treating me like I had some sort of communicable disease ever since I got here."

"You're no servant, are you?"

Oh crap. "Why would you say that?" She didn't like being put on the defensive so quickly. Why did he have to dominate the conversation with such ease?

"I haven't told the rest of them yet, but Aoshi is bound to notice if he bothers to talk to you for very long. I've been around him long enough to figure out how he thinks. You'll probably get to stay." He leaned forward, letting the smirk spread out slowly. "But know that it's only because I didn't make a case for kicking you out. Until I figure out just what you are, you can stay with us. I'm watching you. . . Kaoru."

The man looked so damn smug she wanted to slap him, but at least he had brought her some good news. Already the adrenalin that had been tensing her body eased out and left total exhaustion in its place.

"I suppose I should thank you. This once I'll forget about what a jerk you're being and thank you. . . Enishi."

She actually did stick her tongue out at his retreating back this time.


	5. Chapter 5

"How are boys this disgusting!"

Kaoru grabbed a gob of something that looked like rotting meat from the back of the pantry. There had been a horrible smell emanating from it for a couple days, but she hadn't gotten together the courage to really search for the source of the odor until today. It seemed to be a fish, or what had once been a fish. There was a gaping mouth, and some bones sticking out of the black parts at creative angles. She dropped it when the breath she had taken before entering ran out and she was forced to evacuate the area for another deeper one. This time she would just pick it up and run out as fast as possible. It was a terrible day when she looked back fondly on her time spent around the smell of manure.

It had been surprisingly easy to become part of the woodwork, so to speak, in the house. At first it had been hellish, sorting out what needed to be cleaned, how, and if it were possible to salvage or throw away various things that were discovered in the process. The most mysterious thing was how she kept finding cards. If she could locate a jack of diamonds and the seven of hearts then she would have the whole deck. She would have been happy for a game of something. The only games that were played in this house were in the mind. The family dynamic was still a thing of terrible strangeness.

Yahiko was more polite to her these days after she had taken his side in an argument about taking time off his training to go see his friend in town. The idea of having close friends at all made Kaoru wistful and if the poor kid was stuck up here all winter then why not let him have as much time in summer as he could with his friends. And she thought the fact he had a girlfriend was adorable. Aoshi had not taken kindly to her outspoken opinion, but Yahiko had stopped making loud complaints about her cooking and even tried to help her with the laundry. It was because of her that so much more of his time was freed so he was right to be grateful. Whatever his attitude, he was still more child than adult and her presence somehow gave him more leave to be a kid again than when he was with his brothers. They made him train all the time for some strange reason.

All the older brothers were in more or less states of truce with her over various arguments. Sano, she discovered, was lazy. If she didn't get on his case about doing a chore then he wouldn't do it. Kaoru made up lists of what needed to be done and by whom. Invariably, if she had to pick on someone to make sure it happened, it was always the tall brown haired man. It was an adventure to hunt him down as he found new places to hide and sleep to escape her wrath, but she knew once the weather began to turn he would no longer be able to hide. Since she was often nagging him whenever she saw him, he would jokingly accuse her of acting like a fishwife. With persistence, accompanied by much grinding of teeth, she got along with him.

The way Kaoru interacted with Aoshi was far more careful and much less jovial. When he wasn't off on trips, he was working on correspondence that he would never talk about or helping her cook. Mainly Aoshi cooked when he was there and Kaoru simply stirred things, but there was an underlying resentment that was simmering between them. Kaoru had come to see the inside of the house as, in a way, her domain. Aoshi clearly did not like her interference. It wasn't on the level that Aoshi clashed with Enishi, but they had differences that made things less than harmonious between them and Kaoru felt it. She would have thought that he outright hated her, but he did remember when she asked him to pick up things in town for her and he had never complained about the cost of anything. He even got the bread recipe from the town baker she had wanted. No, Aoshi had good points to go along with the bad ones.

Since everyone was a mixed bag of personality traits, but largely got along with her, Kaoru was wondering more often these days if Enishi was adopted. He was the one who ignored her if he felt her requests weren't important enough to interrupt whatever his own plan was. He was the one who balanced the household accounts and told her she was spending too much on material for clothing or spices from town. He was the one who practically monitored her every movement, especially if she left the immediate vicinity of the house. The man was more watchful than the bodyguards she had had as a child. This enraged her rather than anything else. After a month she expected that he would possibly take her at face value, letting her live among them and manage the house without trouble. No such luck.

Kaoru marched outside where Yahiko was rather happily beating a rug to get the dust out of it.

"Yahiko, when you said you were going fishing two weeks ago, did you happen to catch anything?"

The boy paused, leaning on the stick and looking into the sky. Then his flushed face turned a darker red. "I put one in the pantry because it was the coolest place in the house I could think of. . ."

"And then. . ."

"I forgot that we were having some dried beef that night. I like beef better than fish. I thought I'd tell you about the fish for breakfast." He grimaced and looked down at the ground. "Um. There's a fish in the pantry."

Kaoru tried not to explode. "It didn't occur to you that that funny smell we've all been accusing one another over was the fish!"

Yahiko shrugged. "Last summer there were all sorts of horrible smells in the house."

"Well, it isn't last summer. As long as I'm here you can be reasonably sure that if something smells bad it's because something's wrong and I don't know why." It was useless to get mad now and Kaoru forced herself back to something like calmness. She was simply getting overheated acting like this, and she had been sweating enough as it was today. Summer was exerting the last of its influence as they eased into harvest season. She almost longed for the cool stone of the castle. "Remember to tell me about things like the fish next time, you got it?"

"Yeah yeah. . ." Yahiko put extra effort into beating the rug. He had taken to being told off pretty well today. Usually he would at least put up a cursory argument. Maybe he was just happy that odor would be gone. It had been funky. It was more likely his good mood had to do with the fact that in another week they would be down in the village and he could see Tsubame as much as he wanted.

Kaoru went back inside, wandered over to the corner, and picked up some sewing. All the windows were open because she was airing out the house and she like the feeling of the light breeze on her skin as she worked on making a sturdy dress for winter. It was a little weird looking, but she had assumed a skirt wasn't too hard to figure out and doing it herself wasn't going as badly as it could have. She had only really messed up on the first one, the skirt that had come out so tight that she had been forced to hobble around the house until she could make a new one. After that she knew she needed to give some leeway in her measurements. If her own clothes came out ok, she was thinking of perhaps making some shirts for the boys. . .

It was so easy to think that life could go on like this. Really, it wasn't the life she had been raised to want or to dream of, but it was happier than anything she had had before. Sometimes, Yahiko would bring her some berries he found that he knew she liked. Or Sano would make up a long and funny story about why he hadn't been doing his work not just to get out of another long session of nagging but to make her smile and laugh. He said he liked to hear her laugh. Aoshi had been showing her how to cook, with infinite patience, even if she still couldn't do it well. Even Enishi surprised her sometimes, offering unsolicited compliments on details that she thought no one noticed like when she put out flowers on the table. Nothing escaped his attention. The moments weren't frequent, but that they occurred at all gave her a warm glow inside.

For the first time in her life she wondered if she could dare to use the word family as something other than a classification for those who shared her surname. All of those people were dead and gone at any rate, she thought, and a lump rose in her throat. It was only four weeks ago that her bloodline had nearly been finished. What if all she was doing was endangering these people she was beginning to care about? Winter was too hard to think of navigating on her own. She would ask to stay on in winter and then she would plan on leaving in spring. By then she should have a good idea of where to go and how to get there. Aoshi was often traveling, maybe he could give her some names of people who needed a person to work for them. She should also give serious consideration to changing her name. . .

"I found this in the last page of the ledger." Enishi had somehow appeared beside her as she had wandered off into her mind and Kaoru promptly stabbed herself with the needle that had been half into the fabric. Now it was fully in her hand. She drew in her breath and made a sour face.

"Why do you always have to sneak up on ooooh!" The needle hurt but it didn't leave a hole big enough to bleed much. It was a glancing pain that throbbed in the background as she exclaimed in pleasure over Enishi's find: the long lost jack of diamonds. "Thank you so much! Just one more and then we can all play cards. It's been so long and I don't remember all the rules to some of the games, but I'm sure I'll remember and you'll all be happy that I bothered when we're stuck inside because of snow. It snows a lot, Sano said, so I know you all must get stir crazy. I really appreciate this."

Her gushing was greeted with no more than a raised eyebrow and Enishi began to retreat back to the upstairs bedroom when he instead turned around and came back to Kaoru. This time she was pulling the cards out of her sewing basket, where she kept things she didn't want to lose, and adding the new one into the deck so there was no stabbing as he startled her again.

"We were talking last night, and when Aoshi comes back again, we might start building a shed so that we can clean out the storage space upstairs and turn it into a bedroom for you. It would be small, but you wouldn't have to sleep in the living room anymore."

Kaoru was more than a little overwhelmed. Her own room again. It had been so long. . . .

"I don't know what to say. . ."

He seemed to take that as all the answer he needed, so when Kaoru was so moved that she needed to hug someone, Enishi's back was the only target available. The man's body was stiff as steel as she wrapped her arms around him, but he softened enough to place one rough hand over her linked ones before they were interrupted. Sano, who had come in the open door to fess up to napping in the heat of the afternoon and grab a snack before he continued digging a new outhouse pit, whistled and Kaoru and Enishi sprang apart.

"So this is why you wanted to get her her own room. . . heh." Sano waggled his eyebrows and chuckled knowingly.

"As usual your childish stupidity amazes." Enishi made tracks for the back door.

Kaoru told herself that her heart was beating hard from the excitement of the news of getting her own room, but she wasn't entirely sure. The alarming disappointment of having to let go of the most annoying brother was giving an added burn of shame to the embarrassment.

"I'm really happy about the room. Won't making a shed be a lot of work for you all?" Even if it did, she didn't care. She would build the thing herself so long as she had permission and time. Now that the idea was there she felt tenacious.

"Nah." Sano said. "Mainly for Enishi. He's the one stuck up here while we all go down to help with the harvest, unless you come with us. . ."

"No!" Kaoru felt her blood drain and hoped that she wouldn't have to go through all that again. The argument about her coming to town had been a ferocious one. Her adamant refusal to live in town for the month it took for the men to help with the harvest and make the main chunk of money they would live on for the rest of the year was causing all sorts of complications.

Luckily, there had been an incident last year that had made Enishi nearly unemployable so he was free to stay with her. The unkind way to put it was that he might be lynched on sight if he set foot in the village. Apparently he had hired people to work for him. He had hired some shady characters to work for him. In return for vouching for their credibility, they would give him a percentage of their pay. These were rough times, and even manual labor was valued. When the farmers had found out former criminals had been invited into their homes. . . Enishi had come under fire. He was a notorious figure in towns for miles.

"Someday you need to tell us what happened to you." Sano tried to look sympathetic but Kaoru's jaw hardened stubbornly. "Look, a lot of people have done things in the past that they aren't proud of. I doubt you did anything that bad. These are rough times."

"Oh yeah? You tell me what you've done first and then we'll see."

"Um. I think I have a hole to dig." Sano backed out the front door with big steps, forgetting to even grab the snack he'd ventured in for.

Kaoru smiled. "That's what I thought."

***

There was definitely no way she was staring at Enishi. Absolutely out of the question. She was simply evaluating how well the fit was on the shirt she had made him, and noting that if he was sweating so much he would need to be drinking more water than he was. He had been working at making the shed since before she had woken up this morning, just like she had been working at sewing all morning. Only, Enishi had actually been working on the shed, and Kaoru hadn't quite managed to thread the needle yet. It had only been an hour or so since she sat down.

"Curses." Kaoru blinked and ripped her eyes away from the window. Things had gotten weird in the past week since the boys had left.

Aoshi and Enishi had had a ripping argument before they parted, for one thing. It wasn't loud, but there was a scuffle in the back and both of them had come back bleeding. Aoshi had required stitches on a gash on his arm. Kaoru had swallowed her squeamish nature about blood and had done the job needed, but she complained the whole time about how violence was not the way to solve problems as she tried to talk out her nervousness over the instant nursing. Neither of them were willing to say why they had fought, but it made Kaoru nervous about winter when they would have a harder time being apart from one another.

As if to alleviate his continued aggressive attitude, Enishi had poured himself into building a shed. Aoshi and Sano had been gathering materials ever since Kaoru had been told about her new room. Yahiko had cleared out and prepared an area with Enishi's help so that construction could begin as soon as they all left for town.

That first night everyone had been gone felt oddly lonely for Kaoru. She had done the cleaning upkeep and worked on sewing more things. Her stitching was getting better, she thought, and that was something to take pride in. Some of those old embroidery stitches were coming back to her from those stupid lessons she had taken when she was younger. There were nice details she had added to the sleeves, but nothing too flashy or else she was sure her men would never wear it. It took her a while to realize the reason she was plying her needle with such single minded concentration was because she was anxious.

There was no reason to be anxious. She was just alone with Enishi for the better part of a month. This was _not a reason_ to be fidgeting and glancing around for where he might be. It wasn't that she feared an attack from him, or anything as serious as physical harm. It was simply a strange hyper awareness of him that began to plague her. She knew the cause, and she didn't have to like it.

Just residual loneliness, she told herself when she was feeling particularly stubborn. After all, she had been cooped up in the mountains for a long time with only a few men as company. Most of them were gone and this is the closest she had ever been to living alone in her life. Nothing for miles, no one to talk to except for Enishi. . . .

They had been so desperate to not talk to one another that they had tried to play card games without the seven of hearts. Hours of this passed, many long evenings, and other than owing Enishi more money than the palace took in from tithes in a year (all in fictional gold coins), they hadn't passed a merry day yet. Enishi was too withdrawn and not easily amused. Kaoru was feeling a little shy about being alone with him, and irritated at his constant blasé attitude.

But that didn't account for the tension, the anxiety that twisted in her belly as she watched him hammer together boards and sand down edges. She had only figured out it was Enishi that had caused that and not several days of her cooking because of the incident that happened last night. It was practically insignificant, she told herself, nothing that was out of the ordinary. Telling herself this brought little comfort. She couldn't even lie to _herself_ well.

Last night he had spoken to her a little bit about his sister. That's how it started, anyway.

It was while she was cooking. Enishi was going over papers of some sort. Kaoru was actually beginning to think about sneaking upstairs and finding out where Aoshi and Enishi hid their respective papers. There was no reason, even if they had to manage property other places on the death of their parents, that a little family in the mountains would need so much in the way of correspondence. And then there was the fact that they were terribly well educated and well trained at fighting. Even if she wasn't going to say it, and therefore invite awkward questions about herself, she knew that these men had to be more than they appeared. But so long as she could be a peasant runaway then they could be a poor mountain family if they so wished. Someday she would know the truth.

"Stop stirring the soup so much, you're practically making it a slurry. When Tomo—" He slammed his jaw shut as if he had suddenly been stricken with lockjaw. Color drained from him face as he turned back to his papers.

"Who?" Kaoru asked. He had looked so fazed she had to pursue the subject.

"No one. Just forget I said anything."

She wasn't that easily shaken off from the scent of something so interesting. "No, I think that I need to know who it was that knew how to stir soup just right. Did you say Tammy?"

"I said Tomoe." He snapped, then cringed as if he had done it involuntarily. "This conversation ends here."

Kaoru brandished her wooden spoon menacingly. "No need to get snippy. You're the one who started it. And it's been nearly a day since you spoke to me at all. I would think that any chance to talk would at least make us both feel a little better. And there isn't anyone here to interrupt, so I was hoping maybe you could start acting more like a human being."

Enishi looked at her, unblinking, then seemed to examine something in her face that made him downcast when she smiled softly to encourage him. "Tomoe was my sister. . ."

"So you _are_ adopted." Kaoru sighed.

"What?" Enishi looked nonplussed. "Oh, yes, of course." He sounded somehow insincere.

"I'm so sorry, it just came out."

"Well, it's obvious I'm not related to them. If I were related to Sanosuke I would be seriously considering a murder suicide to end the bloodline."

Kaoru gave a small laugh, and then turned back to the soup which was beginning to burn. "How old were you when you were adopted? Where is your sister now? What sort of person is she?"

"She was beautiful, graceful, perfect. She died when I was very young." Enishi said with something underlying his tone that made her shiver. She didn't want to turn around right then and see the expression on his face. She could practically feel his anger. "This isn't something we need to discuss anymore. The only reason I brought it up is that in a certain light. . . sometimes. . . you share a resemblance to her."

Trying to make light of things to bring them back to equilibrium, Kaoru made a weak joke. "Yeah, 'beautiful, graceful, and perfect' are pretty far off the mark when it comes to me. I guess I won't trouble you much with memories."

"Your false modesty is getting tiresome. We _do_ own mirrors, after all."

"Excuse me?"

Enishi arched an eyebrow and laced his fingers together as he leaned his elbows on the table. "You must know very well you're probably the prettiest thing for miles, even with matted hair and a dirty apron."

If she noticed how he had deflected the topic away from his sister it was buried under a torrent of her patented instant anger. "And you're the most cynical and horrible thing for miles! I've seen rocks with more personable social skills!"

"You flounce around the house, wrapping all of the others around your little finger, but I'm sure it's that pretty face that got you into trouble in the first place."

Kaoru wondered if a wooden spoon could pierce the rib cage if thrust hard enough at a person. "What are you implying?"

"Nothing. You've given me no evidence either way. But I have noticed how much time you've spent around Aoshi and Sanosuke, and if you think marrying into this household is a good idea, then you should forget it." There was something nasty in his tone, bitter, but angry in a way unlike how he had been angry over discussing Tomoe.

Things could have gotten ugly from there, but in fact it had the opposite effect. Kaoru, when faced with the utterly unappealing idea of being married to either Sano (who she regarded as a somewhat daffy jester of an older brother) or Aoshi (who barely registered as male to her on any given day, and sometimes was reaching for automaton rather than human) could do nothing but laugh. It was a deep belly laugh that had her clutching the counter and weeping tears of pure mirth while Enishi made snide remarks in the background.

"You needn't laugh so hard." Then, "I take this to mean you weren't flirting."

"No." Kaoru paused only a moment to choke out the words. "I'll g-get back to stir-ir-iring," she snorted and regained control. "Dinner will be ready soon."

It only occurred to her in the semi-privacy of her living room bed that Enishi might have been jealous. Even more mortifying was the concept that she not only liked his potential jealousy, she enjoyed the idea that he thought her beautiful. Family had been a new enough concept, one that had been more than what she expected and yet aggravating at the same time. If having a family put her off stride, the whole idea of romance put her at odds with her old ideals even more. Enishi was no prince charming. This was much too complex, and she wished they didn't have another two weeks of being solely in one another's company.

She could always assume this was just a logical consequence of being in one another's presence for too long. Once the boys came back everything would go back to exactly the way it had been before. She hinged her hopes on that. Anything that stopped this dangerous anxiety and growing affection for Enishi.

***

Aoshi, tired from a day of hauling bushels of wheat to carts for shipment, didn't betray an ounce of weariness as he met with the short cloaked traveler. He groaned internally when he noticed the ugly, lumpy hat that the stranger in the inn's bar was wearing. He had an idea what it concealed under the rough cloth. That and the slight frame were enough evidence to come to a conclusion about who this person could be.

Eyes lit up as a squeak was stifled from the person waiting to meet with him. Misao had always been horrible at disguising herself as a man. Boy was the best she could hope for, and in the past few years even that was getting difficult as she put on height and weight. It wasn't even the curves, because she had few enough of those, it was the whole bearing she had.

Misao had never acted like a man, and she never had to since she had always trained under Tokio. Goro's wife had had her own unit in the king's special forces, that's how she had met Goro in the first place. The queen had to be provided with guards and bodyguards who could go everywhere with her. Women were the logical choice. Tokio had been the person who trained with them and arranged the schedule for the women who attended the queen and the princess. After the first queen died, many of Tokio's duties had been reduced and her unit almost disbanded except that no one took any real action after the initial cutbacks. Misao had been a late addition, a hopeful attendant for the princess, but before she could be assigned Shishio had shown up and. . .

"It's been so long!" Misao's enthusiasm shone in her eyes as she drank in the sight of Aoshi. Her affection for Goro's protégé had always been obvious, even a point of humor among the troops. What had been a girlish crush had continued on and now that she was a young woman interacting with her was getting, hm, complicated. Luckily, tonight was about business.

"Why are you here, Misao?" Aoshi sat down and gestured to the barkeep for something to drink so that they could look inconspicuous. "Goro hasn't sent me anything but letters for nearly a year. I was naturally concerned when I—"

Miaso couldn't wait to impart her news and interrupted Aoshi, putting a hand on his arm to emphasize how important it was that he listen to her. "She's alive!"

"What?"

"The princess. They think she's still alive. Turns out, the old man who ran the stables got handed over to some interrogators because a horse disappeared. The nag had gotten out the night before and was sleeping in a field, but but but. . ." Aoshi was listening to Misao's roundabout tale with his usual patience. "When he was being questioned, seems he said something about how it used to be Kaoru's job to keep the staff in line. She was quite the manager. And seeing as there aren't that many girls named Kaoru around. . ." Aoshi made a motion with his hand for her to speed up the story. "I'm getting there!" Misao complained.

"So, they go around looking for this girl, right, but she can't be found. Then they think she ran away, ok? Now they want to know why. And . . . as they were trying to find out where she was and what she looked like they figured out that she bore a rather more than striking resemblance to the old queen. And you know they never found a body for her. . . just that one burned person that might have been her. But rings and things don't make a person."

Aoshi made a shushing gesture and they took their drinks as they arrived to the table. Only Misao smiled as Aoshi passed a few coins over for the drinks. Misao took a deep drink of her ale, much to Aoshi's surprise but he didn't have time to even think of a comment because Misao was talking again.

"Now where was I? Oh, yeah, the stable kid. Yeah." Misao's eyes became big and bright with happiness as she talked. "Turns out that Kaoru had disappeared under some very strange circumstances. And now Shishio is having discreet groups of his elite guard out looking around for her. He's not taking any chances. This is all top secret info, though, just word of mouth at the moment. Saitou has spies all over, he's been working at it this whole time, and he says that the story checks out from different reports."

"Saitou?"

Misao slapped her forehead. "Damn. I wasn't supposed to mention that. Yeah, that's Goro's new name. He's Hajime Saitou now. He's a police officer down in the port city. More of a mercenary, rent a cop, right? Tokio has been teaching traditional dancing. She's not very happy with it. . . I'm her assistant. They're undercover still. Just forget I said anything."

Aoshi hadn't touched his drink. He hadn't planned to, it was just for appearances, but Misao's words had touched him in a way that made him thirsty for the possibilities they offered. "So is Goro moving up the time table? Recruiting for the counterattack has been steady, but with someone like the princess to rally behind—"

"Yes," Misao said, but her happy smile dimmed. "But this is all assuming that the princess isn't dead, and that we can find her before Shishio does. I mean, it would be great to have a legit heir to the throne to prevent a power struggle or civil war assuming we push out Shishio, but how are we going to find her if even a sorcerer can't—"

This time it was Aoshi who interrupted. "That's not a problem. I have a pretty good idea I know where she is. In fact, I'm rather annoyed with myself for not seeing it before." He downed half of his ale in a single drought.


	6. Chapter 6

It would have helped, Enishi reflected to himself approximately one day before his life exploded into even more drama than it already had, if he weren't so damn good at everything he did. The shed was taking hardly any time at all, nearly done after his two solid weeks of work. It wasn't big, and it wasn't fancy, but it he had drug out the construction of it as long as he could. Anything to keep him outdoors and out of the house which had become infused with everything he wanted but couldn't have. . .

More accurately the house contained a very specific person he wanted and couldn't have. But he wasn't sure exactly why he couldn't have her. The idea of it seemed to be grand, and the execution of it would be easy, considering how open and understanding she was, but as soon as he got up the nerve to make a move something seemed to nail him in the gut and his tongue would twist. Could someone punch with their eyes? She seemed to every time she caught him in her watery blues. And here he had used his fists all those years.

Two weeks of this was getting a little old. They had only reached the halfway point. If things were going to get exponentially worse, as they had seemed to each day, he would be dead by the middle of next week. It was more than just those eyes of hers, it was the way he couldn't stop staring at her mouth when she spoke, or the way her fingers moved as she sewed, the fabric of her dress stretching over her back as she cooked. . . . Naturally, as soon as she saw him looking at her she would color around the face, often blotchy red and slightly unattractive like when she got angry, and then try to start up a conversation. Embarrassed, he would make some biting remark intended to upset her. She would get upset. One or the other of them would leave the room, and then Enishi would sigh with relief or slap himself on the forehead depending on how cruel his last comment had been.

It was amazing how easily this chit had turned a former crime lord into a childish teen with his first crush. He knew he was better than this, more suave and deliberate. He knew that what he needed were sweet words and sentimental drivel to win her, but such things grated against him. Enishi would rather she hate him than for him to change himself so drastically to fit whatever it was that she wanted. Then again, he would have killed to know just exactly what it was that she did want. The paradoxical wants and needs were driving him crazy, so he took a hammer and pounded some nails in to make himself feel better. Thus, the shed project went fast despite his purposeful delays.

Tonight would be the night. There would be no fighting, he had decided on it, and he knew he could call together enough of his former calm and presence of mind to accomplish this feat. He had patience for the things he wanted, but what with the stagnation of their relations there was no more time for dancing around. No matter how painful, tonight they were going to get some things straight.

Maybe he had been stamping down on her feelings a little too much, Enishi reflected, because she looked decidedly pinched when she greeted him for supper. The state of her displeasure was confirmed when dinner turned out to be gruel. It was some sort of grain based soup, she said, but she had measured the grains out wrong it was a little too thick. Of course, this had overpowered the flavoring she had added hence. . . rice and vegetable soup had become gruel with chunks. He swallowed down a bowl of it with a tight throat as she did the same. To her credit, at least there was no choking as there had been the night before with her rabbit stir fry that had been so overcooked you couldn't really chew through the meat.

"More?" She held out a bowl of the stuff, looking more solid than food had a right to be.

"No." Enishi said flatly.

"Ah."

It was the most successful conversation they had had in days. It hadn't ended with anything remotely like a nasty word.

"Look," Kaoru said, obviously trying to yet again broach some topic, but Enishi cut her off.

"I've been. . . temperamental. . . recently." Enishi locked eyes with her, felt the slam in his gut, and continued on anyway knowing nothing could hurt him with all that gruel taking the brunt of the blast.

Kaoru drew her mouth into a line, letting one corner tilt up as if she were entering into a small mental joke. "You mean, you've been nasty and argumentative?"

"Whatever you wish to call it, but the underlying problem here is. . ."

". . . that you don't like me." She looked down wearily. "I thought at the beginning, maybe, that there was some possibility that I could use this time to prove to you that I'm not as bad of a person as you seem to think." Picking up the bowl of gruel she walked over to scrape it into the bin of compost that would need to be emptied after supper. It fell in as a single glob, nearly taking the spoon she was using with it. "But clearly you don't want to give me a chance so I'll just—"

Enishi snapped at her out of habit. "I wasn't done." She turned to her to catch him out of the corner of her eye. In profile, a little sad, she reminded him again how achingly beautiful she could be even now. His tongue tried to knot, but an act of will on his part kept him going. "I do think you're lying, still, but I no longer care. You're more of a danger to yourself than other people."

"Um." She clearly wasn't sure if that was a compliment or an insult, since it was the closest thing to kindness he had offered her so far. She set the bowl in the sink and came over to sit back down across from him. Enishi seemed to be struggling to plan his words as he ran a hand through his hair. This was as hard as he had thought it would be, only confirming his suspicions about what the state of his feelings for her were. It displeased him to know something like that this early in the conversation.

"What I mean, in so many words, not that I'm admitting there weren't reasons for the things I said, but, you see. . ." His face suffused with color. "Maybe the reasons weren't as well planned out as they could have been, compared to previous incidents."

There was a brief pause while Kaoru worked this out in her head, and then she smiled radiantly. "You're saying you were wrong, aren't you? This is as close as you can get to apologizing, isn't it?"

"I'm not apologizing. I'm explaining the situation since perhaps some elements of it were mistaken on one or both of our parts."

"You're worse than a politician." Kaoru sighed. "But you might as well cave in and admit it. Say I'm sorry, and I'll forgive you, but you have to say it."

Enishi would rather have stabbed himself than say those words. Saying those words would be admitting that he had been wrong. He wasn't wrong, he was simply not completely in a logical frame of mind when he had been engaged in conversation with her recently. Kaoru got up and circled over to him, bouncing a little as she walked, and in general being absolutely smug now that she thought she had him trapped. If she wanted an apology, that wasn't going to get it from him. What it was inspiring, as she neared him emanating the scent of dried flowers and vegetables, a combination of her soap and dinner, was far more physical than mere words. And still involving the use of his mouth.

She placed her hands on his shoulders, squeezing them a little. If she was sensitive enough to how charged the situation had suddenly become, then she would notice how his muscles were locked tight. But, much to Enishi's dismay, she was still clueless as she bent over to smile next to his face cajolingly. He remembered, faintly, how she had done this once to Yahiko when he had had an argument with Aoshi about his girlfriend in town and the nature of responsibility in general. Yahiko had crossed his arms and she had shaken him around from behind until the boy loosened up a little and then they talked things over.

Enishi was not Yahiko. She began to rock him gently as if she could make the words fall from his lips. He showed her what a mistake in judgment she had made when he turned his head quickly and pressed a hand to her cheek to steady her as he furiously claimed what he had been thinking about for what seemed like ages. Their kiss started out awkward, with Kaoru stunned and unresponsive. When they parted, Enishi decided that that wouldn't do and stood up so that they could get a better angle on things and this time kissed her properly. It took a while for her to figure out that this wasn't a fluke, and he wasn't going to give up until she did something, so she finally closed her eyes. . .

And that's when the real kiss happened. It wasn't real, it wasn't something they would have needed to worry about or think on again, if she had never participated in it. That's what he had told himself, so that there was really nothing to lose if she had rejected him. Once her mouth softened against his and she pressed forward with an earnest and unexpected surge of passion, Enishi knew he was lost.

She gathered into his arms so easily, all softness and innocence but at the same time determined and oh so erotic for all of this and more. The way the heels of her hands were pressed against his hips felt like she was going to push him away, but then she allowed her fingers to press down and he assumed it was just the last vestige of modesty keeping her hesitant. There was nothing to fear they were alone for miles.

At that thought his mind too a distinctly more perverse turn than it had been going to regarding tonight's sleeping arrangements.

"Kaoru," His said, low so that his voice would rumble a little in his chest as he said it. The thrumming murmur of her response was lost to a wordless trill as he moved down to her neck with his mouth. It was just the work of a moment to mark that perfect flesh of hers. With a powerful surge of possessiveness he admired his work and then crushed her to him in a tight hug.

"I could never hate you. Which is why I disliked you so much." He said, and finally noticed her flailing around a bit. Oh, yes. He let her up for air and she gasped a little before she laughed faintly.

Enishi was bending down for another kiss and she was closing her eyes, a smile curling up her lush lips when the front door slammed open. There was a blur of movement and Kaoru noticed that while it was an impressive throw, to grab the kitchen knife a couple feet away and toss it with such accuracy given its poor balance, it was even more impressive that Aoshi caught it out of the air. Damn but he was good.

"You'll unhand her and back away, Yukishiro."

"Tut tut," Enishi said, poison dripping from his words. "That's no way to speak to your brother."

Aoshi set the knife down on a chair as he approached the two of them. "There's no more need for these lies. It's over. We've found the princess and we're making our bid against Shishio as soon as Goro can get everyone informed and organized."

Even Kaoru noticed the way Enishi's eyes tracked to her, or so he assumed because she was staring at him too. They couldn't just drop a bombshell like this and leave Kaoru in the woods alone.

"I insist she come with us. She's no danger. And even if she's a spy, I'll take full responsibility for. . ."

"That's not necessary, Yukishiro." Aoshi looked perturbed. Enishi wondered if he'd ever seen him like that before, even when they fought.

Enishi crossed his arms. "Well as long as Kaoru can—"

"She's not the one who's staying, you are. Or, if you decide to come, you'll keep your distance from her."

"I don't think you're in any position to dictate my personal interactions."

Aoshi was not amused. "Maybe not, but I certainly have a vested interest in the safety of my monarch, and you certainly have always been a concern in that area."

Enishi was quicker on the uptake than Kaoru seemed to be at the moment, and he clutched at the counter behind him, unwilling to look at her any longer. Lying was not something Aoshi did. He worked in information as well as trained for combat. While Enishi didn't trust Aoshi cutting short his work to either inform him of the upcoming battle or to interfere with his love life, that Aoshi would come here to fetch away the Princess was entirely plausible. Bitter truths to swallow so quickly after having just obtained what he was being informed that could no longer have.

It was only after a moment of silence so thick you'd need two hands to tear it when Kaoru finally emerged from her daze and picked up on the conversation. "How did you find out?"

Enishi, despite himself, groaned at this. There had been hope so long as she denied it. The woman couldn't lie to save her life. . . and yet she had fooled the very people who desperately wanted to find her for months! The irony would have been funny if this situation could end with her still in his arms at the end of the day.

"It doesn't matter, Your Royal Highness. What matters is that we've found you and that we take you someplace safe while your men prepare for battle." Aoshi bowed, not deeply but courteously.

For a moment, just a split second of calculated evil, Enishi considered killing Aoshi and then making a run for it with Kaoru. It was idle fancy, he knew, since murdering Shishio for interfering in his revenge was still his top priority. That the thought had even occurred worried him a bit. The girl, no, Kaoru. . . no. . . the Princess. . . was an involving side note but the possibility that she would be something to threaten his life's ambition was slightly shocking. He wanted to push her away as well as chain her to him simultaneously and his conflicting emotions made him weak in this argument.

"Pack some food for the trip, Your Highness. I'll ready the horses."

"Horses? On the mountain? But they could break a leg so easily and how did you find the money for. . ."

Aoshi looked crossly at her. "There are paths. And there are no time for such questions."

Kaoru crossed her arms, no longer passively watching the two men posture. Enishi knew that look better than Aoshi did. And the tall dark haired man was going to get some of Kaoru's patented sass.

"I don't appreciate you dictating to me what you're going to do. Just because you know who I am doesn't exactly make me want to jump into your crusade. There's been enough bloodshed. What if I'm happy here? What if I don't want what you're offering me." Enishi was slightly amused that she was trying, but knew that it was probably hopeless.

"Don't be selfish." Aoshi snapped. "There will be war either way, unless you've forgotten Shishio's tactics. He's been training an army to spread across all the neighboring kingdoms to build himself an empire. We stop him here, or he will become a menace. And we can't assure any moral superiority or even a future for the kingdom without a legitimate heir to put on the throne once Shishio is deposed." Aoshi's voice was like a whip through the air and Kaoru cringed even if he didn't speak loudly. "You are a symbol, a bargaining chip, and a leader all at once. But as our princess, you should understand why we need you, Your Highness." The honorific sounded hollow compared to his scolding words.

Enishi saw the way Kaoru's eyes flashed and her lips pressed into a line and knew Aoshi had gone too far. She was going to refuse him just to be difficult. He wanted her to refuse him. To put her in danger alarmed him, further messing up his feelings towards her in a mass of complications that drove him to be silent as he watched them face off. Everyone waited for what would no doubt be an outburst of temper on her part. They had seen it enough times to know the warning signs.

"I'll pack a few things. I'll be ready in fifteen minutes." The words were soft, monotone. She turned on her heel and marched upstairs with heavy steps. Most of her personal items had been moved upstairs recently since the shed was basically completed. The sudden agreement and the fast retreat caused both men to look at one another in an empathetic moment of confusion.

Aoshi recovered first. "I saw the mark on her neck. Men have been executed for less."

Enishi resisted the urge to call him outside for another fight. Their last one had been entirely unsatisfying. Entirely not enough blood. "You only brought two horses, didn't you?" Aoshi didn't respond, but he knew the answer was yes. "And you don't plan to let me within a speaking distance ever again, either, now that you know she isn't some country girl." Statement, not question.

"You're a security concern. It's best that you give up on her now. There are other women."

For that Enishi moved like lightening, landing a furious punch on Aoshi's cheek only to jump back to avoid the brunt of the kick that was Shinomori's automatic response. He would be rewarded with a bruised rib instead of a broken one because of his fast reflexes.

"Not like her, Shinomori, and you know it."

***

Enishi hadn't been there when Kaoru had gotten back downstairs. And Aoshi had had a rather red mark on his cheek. She thought she guessed what happened, but didn't ask questions that she knew she wouldn't get an answer for.

Their ride down the mountain had been without incident, even if it took nearly as long as if they had walked due to the winding trails the horses were forced to travel on. Half a day away from the closest town Aoshi gave her a hooded cloak and she didn't need to be threatened to put it on.

Some of her reasoning lay in the vague obligation she had always felt as a princess of the realm, but the main reason that she had agreed was because the odds that they would just let her go about the life she wanted were slim to none. Rather than leading her forces as a prisoner, she would keep her dignity and do it right. She knew very well she wouldn't be planning attacks, or even wielding a sword. She would look pretty and regal and be what she had been to her father and her step-mother since before she could remember.

An ornament again. Not really wanted and yet not able to be discarded. Maybe, just maybe, this way she could prevent more bloodshed. It was a better than running and hiding, only to be dragged back.

The familiar feelings of worthlessness tried to crush her and she fought them back with anger. Mostly at Enishi. Why had he left so suddenly? He wasn't the sort of person who would be easily intimidated by such a thing as her being a princess, and this was his war too. To abandon his fellow fighters seemed dirty to her, and she didn't think he would do something like that either. So if he was still part of the counterrevolution and she wasn't seeing him, then she figured he was avoiding her. The mark on her neck hadn't even faded and already he had proved an inconsistent suitor.

It wasn't that she was in love with him. Nothing so silly. Of course not. That had just been an infatuation. They had been living close to one another and she was a pretty girl while he was a handsome man.

The fact that she had never felt anything like that for anyone else, no matter how handsome, didn't worry her. Not one bit. She had only started biting her nails again because she was nervous about returning to fight Shishio. Sure.

Aoshi didn't speak to her and Kaoru didn't try to talk to him as they made their way as fast as the horses could go without collapsing. At one point someone met them at a wayside with fresh horses and they picked up even more speed. Eventually they found themselves in front of a small house with a sign out front that declared that dancing lessons could be found inside if they inquired within.

"Go in." He said shortly to her once she had dismounted. "I'll take the horses."

Kaoru, after days of being under such tight watch that she was afraid that he had even spied on her while she was going to the bathroom, didn't trust that he would leave her to her own devices without a second thought. He watched her, waiting for her to go into the house. Head held high despite the grime of the road weighing her down along with her apprehensions, Kaoru tried to look noble as she entered the nicely kept house.

Strains of music were in the background while Kaoru looked around. Bravado in front of Aoshi, just to spite him, had been easy. Now she was wandering through unknown territory and a grimace pinched her mouth. There was a reception area, a little foyer, and then a long hall that seemed to lead to several rooms with sliding doors. A gaggle of women passed by shortly after the music stopped, laughing and fingering their traditional robes. Some were fiddling with their hair. A few glanced her way, but most were content to continue forward and speak with their friends. Eventually a short woman with a fat braid emerged and rushed forward to grab Kaoru's hands.

"Whatever happened to you Eri! Looks like you got lost again! You're going to be late for your lesson, come on!" The familiarity with which the girl addressed her seemed to put the women at ease who had been giving her strange looks. Now she had become entirely invisible to them with just a few words from this bouncing woman.

Kaoru was dragged in to one of the studios where a woman was putting away a peculiar looking stringed instrument that Kaoru vaguely remembered as one of the older versions of ones popular today. This woman was older, sharp looking but not unkind. Her salt and pepper hair was tied into a tight bun, revealing her squared and stubborn jawline and beautiful tilted eyes. It would have been awkward looking on someone with less dignity or authority, but this woman carried herself lightly and confidently.

"Eri came this time, Tokio! See? I told you she would this week!" The braided girl practically yelled it out as the woman glanced their way.

"Enough Misao. You need to learn a little subtlety." The lady came over and bowed deeply to Kaoru. "Forgive me, my lady, but Misao gets a little enthusiastic. Rest assured you're perfectly safe here. There's no need to keep that hood on."

It wasn't so much that she trusted these people as that she knew Aoshi would never take her to a place that would put her in danger. So Kaoru took her hood off and tried to prepare herself for the gasps of shock, or whatever it is they would do when they saw her in the state she was in after several days of rough travel. Misao sort of gaped at her, while Tokio shook her head.

"Is it that bad?"

Misao vigorously indicated a negative. "I would kill to look like that on a bad day."

"Princess, I just want you to know I never lost hope that you were alive. When Goro wanted to find a look alike I told him that we'd never find someone to come even halfway to resembling you."

"You also threw him out of the—ow!" Tokio had kicked out her foot to catch Misao in the shin so fast that Kaoru only knew by the settling of her robe what had happened.

Tokio stepped forward, her joy pouring out of her in a way that was so unlike how anyone had ever treated Kaoru before. "It was like losing a child two years ago. At the palace I watched over you since you were a baby. I posted guards around you at all times. My forces, or what was left of us, were ordered never to interfere, simply to keep you from danger. . . . you look so much like your mother."

"You knew my mother?" Kaoru was instantly more interested and entirely distracted from why she was here.

"We can discuss things another time. Let's clean you up and get you to Goro. While I don't approve of the haste in which things have been done recently, I can't deny that action must come before reflection in presenting you to the troops."

***

Half the kingdom away, in a cold stone room, Yumi screamed and screamed.


	7. Chapter 7

Enishi practically stormed into the office, kicking old wood with enough force to shatter the impact points to splinters. To say he was in a bad mood was a terrible understatement. It wasn't a black mood, or even a foul one, and while murderous wasn't too far away it didn't quite eclipse just how he was practically radiating danger. Behind him a man tried not to whimper.

"This! This is all that's left of my offices here!" He sat down heavily on the corner of the desk and felt it jar as one of the legs was crushed and consequently fell off. Since this was a major port for the kingdom, Shishio had largely left it untouched so that the business infrastructure could get back on its feet as fast as possible. He wasn't stupid, he knew a kingdom needed its fields and ships. . . even if most of the people were disposable. Because of that, Enishi had been fairly confident that his operations could be resumed where he was making the most money. His assets had been frozen, of course, as soon as he had disappeared. . . but not everything he owned was legally declared. This little house that had been a temporary storage facility for smuggled goods was the main base in town which he would visit for reports of his less than legal activities.

It wasn't as if he didn't have a second in command. . . what had happened to that tightly run organization of his?

"Sorry, sir, but when you left. . . well. . . Houji and Heishin both started claiming that they were the ones who were really left in charge when you up and disappeared, Mr. Yukishiro, sir." This servile balding man had been a janitor. It seemed like he had been squatting here ever since the building had been gutted. No rent to pay. With Enishi back he seemed to be deathly afraid that the former crime lord would take out his anger on him. Enishi very nearly did.

"Let me guess, people took sides and then there was a rather pitched battle." The scars on the wall where people had been backed against it while fighting showed him all the information he needed to know about how things went. Most of the blood seemed to have been scrubbed off of the wall at least.

"Yessir."

Times like this, he wished he smoked.

"Get me some food. I don't care what it is so long as it's hot and there's a lot of it."

"Sir, I have food here. . ." Enishi gave him a glare that had him scurrying away without any more color commentary. He wasn't in the mood to hear it. And this man had to get out of his company for his own good. When did he become so kind as to dismiss underlings before he abused them for their own incompetence?

_She made me weak. . ._

It wasn't the first time he had thought that. There were the little things, the way he had stole some old nag from a farmer instead of a good horse when a voice of conscience he had never had before pulled him away from that sprightly looking stallion. She was there when he actually asked some farmer down the road to spend the night instead of sleeping in the barn and stealing supplies in the morning. And now that he was in the same city as her, he was determined to settle things. After all, he was still a part of the resistance and they couldn't deny him that much. There would be ways of finding out where she was. Subterfuge was largely unnecessary. All he had to do was find that Myoujin brat. Or Sagara. They would know, and either was an easy target to pump for answers.

The only problem was Shinomori. The man was like a hawk, and Goro no less vigilant. Even so, he was sure it wasn't enough. He was sure she needed him. And damn it all if he didn't want to go and talk to her, explain why he had left without speaking to her. He never explained things to anyone, but it was almost an irresistible impulse.

While he had thought he was being strong and getting a head start on the long trek back to where the new center of the resistance lay, Enishi knew he had really left because of petty jealousy. He wanted to punish her for choosing to go with Shinomori so quickly. It had been a decision fitting a monarch, perhaps, but a part of him wished she had put up more of a fight. The fire she showed him on a daily basis seemed to be dashed from her as soon as she took up the mantle of her title once more.

Damn it all if he knew why he wanted to see her again, to protect her, but he was sure if he dug down deep for the answer he wouldn't like it. So, being who he was, he went with his gut. And his gut said that he was the best person to guard her. If it was grounded in sentimentality, he excused it away as his attempt to get closer to the future monarch. It was a calculated step.

The boiling fear for her safety unsettling his sleep was simply an anomalous reaction. Yeah. Sure it was.

As he sat on the desk another leg finally gave out, dropping an entire side of the desk a little further down. Enishi sighed.

***

Kaoru sighed.

It had been a week since she had arrived and already it was too cold. It was only mid-autumn, but a cold snap was making it feel like winter. She tried to be gloomy, to drown herself in the melancholy of cold weather, but most days she was pretty happy if a little bored. If she needed something, Misao was always in attendance. Misao was nice enough, even if her favorite topics of conversation seemed to consist of Aoshi, complaining about the dance classes, Aoshi, and sometimes the glamour of court life. And of course Aoshi. For someone Kaoru had never thought too much about before she felt like she was privy to nearly everything that had happened to him since he was old enough to carry a sword. Misao was an expert at coaxing out information, or she must be, if she knew so much about the man.

Misao would ask questions about Kaoru's life as a princess, seeming to think that it was something fraught with romantic encounters, rich food, and pretty dresses. Kaoru tried not to focus on those past endless attempts at tutoring her in conduct and academics, or the stifling sense of loneliness that her elevated position had given her. She tried to be positive, but when Misao launched into her hypothetical musings about how wonderful her life would be when Kaoru was queen, Kaoru would always avert her eyes or look out a window. At first she had been searching for someon. . .something. Now she just didn't want Misao to see her honest confusion over the future.

Being queen didn't seem like such a great honor. It was just all that was left for her with her almost family busted up and revealed as guardsmen. It hadn't been so great a surprise when Aoshi had finally realized who she was, and she had felt mighty foolish for thinking they could be anything but trained fighters from the start. She had even convinced herself that they were related. How gullible could she be? What woodsmen forced their little brothers to practice sword drills endlessly, or who had to confer with one another over the proper way to fix a table? They didn't know anything about the daily running of a house, but she remembered them stifling an argument about fighting styles as she rounded a corner.

_Admit it Kaoru, you just didn't **want** to see it._

What had been even more demoralizing than reclaiming her title was the revelations she was treated to about Enishi Yukishiro, one of the kingdom's most wanted and most notorious criminals before Shishio had shown his face. Could she imagine him capable of the things Misao had told her about (most likely prompted by Aoshi)? Yes. Certainly she could. She lived with the man for several months. He was just as Misao warned her, a suspicious, lethal, opportunistic, revenge obsessed, villain. But people are more than the sum of their reputation, and Kaoru knew the Enishi who had been on the verge of opening up, of talking to her, and she would never forget the Enishi she had kissed. Two years was a long time to be away from the criminal underground. People were not the same people after two years, and to judge him by what he had been would be like. . . Misao's blind adoration of her mythical life as a princess. It was just more assumptions.

However, the bastard hadn't contacted her yet so she vilified him out loud to her heart's content. It wasn't entirely false, on her part, since she was truly angry. But once she calmed down, she knew her comments were not sincere. She missed the jerk.

"Kaoru!" Misao burst into the room. They had done away with the formal titles quickly because Misao couldn't seem to decide on just one and Kaoru had been answering to most of the variations she had thought up, such as Your Sereneness, and Your High Grace. In Misao's arms were boxes, and Kaoru had a sinking feeling she knew what was in them. After expressing the desire for some warmer clothes, Misao took it upon herself to dress Kaoru up like the princess she thought she should be. Somehow this translated to "gaudy color explosion, with lace trim".

"I told you I didn't need any more dresses, Tokio gave me some of her old ones and they'll do for now. Stop wasting your money, Misao!" Kaoru felt that thrifty side of her bristle, but even worse she felt like a charity case.

Misao drew out a bunch of see through undergarments, most of them probably more fitting for women of questionable virtue. Kaoru was intrigued but couldn't wear such things even if she wanted to, it was too cold.

"I found the best stuff today, all night clothes and stuff. I got all this before I found something really pretty." Misao held a box over her head like a trophy and then set it down carefully amid the explosion of clothes to pull out a rather beautiful long nightgown. It looked like silk, and was a creamy pink that drew Kaoru's eye. "The lady who I got it from said it was fit for a princess, and I got a killer deal since it was the end of the day and she was packing up. I can haggle like a pro when I want to."

Kaoru examined the lacing in the front, happy to have something nice to sleep in. Silk was one of those things she did miss from her old life, only because of its beauty and the smooth feeling of it against her skin. "Thank you, Misao, really."

"I'm glad you like it." Misao grinned fit to split her face. "You've been the walking dead for like two days."

"I have not!"

"Have so!" Misao pulled herself up straight and put her hands on her hips. "I have to give full reports to Tokio and Aoshi about you every day. And you've been, er, droopy. You want to see an impression?" Misao sighed, then slumped her shoulders and dragged herself over to the window. After she sighed again and draped a hand theatrically across her forehead, Kaoru pelted her with undergarments.

She laughed a little. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

"Pretty close. Cheer up, right? Hey, you want some dinner, I was going to raid the kitchens."

"That's fine, I ate not too long ago, and I was going to turn in early tonight."

Misao looked concerned about this. Kaoru had been sleeping an awful lot since she got here. Even she was beginning to realize how unhealthy it was, but right now she didn't want to deal with it. After gathering up the one nice nightgown, Kaoru dumped the rest of the pile on Misao who wandered out trailing bloomers with pink bows and black see through stockings behind her.

"G'night Kaoru."

"Night, Misao."

It wasn't even eight o'clock yet and she was thinking about turning in. Ah well. At least she had something nice to put on. Rain began to pound outside, creating a lulling sound. Not cold enough to snow yet, but close, and it would probably be like ice outside tomorrow when the pre dawn temperature dip hit. Shivering in the room, Kaoru got out of her clothes and into the nightgown as fast as possible. There was lacing up the front and she hastily pulled at it, tying a loose bow and climbing under the covers of her bed in the corner.

Her shivering was stopping, but she noticed that she had left the lamp lit on the other side of the room. With a sigh she got up and began to cross when she noted she felt a little short of breath. Kaoru pulled at the lacings but they held fast, even tightened as she fought to inhale deeply enough. By the time she realized she was in real trouble of having her rib cage crushed, she couldn't take a deep enough breath to cry out. Tears of anger began to form in the corners of her eyes. It was a stupid way to die, suffocated by a nightgown.

She gave one more wheeze, which was all she knew she'd get at the rate it was tightening. There had to be something in the room to help her. This was blindingly painful, and one of her nails broke as she sawed at a glossy pink ribbon. She could see spots. Had she struggled to the window, it was suddenly colder. Maybe if she could make enough noises. . . no it was raining hard, no one would hear unless she could break that lamp loudly enough.

At once she was freed, and she gasped like a dying fish as precious oxygen was drawn back into her body. Something dripped onto her face and soaked through the side of her nightgown before she felt like she was being crushed again. Arms around her shook slightly as her savior pulled back, to reveal aqua eyes under a mottled grey and dark brown camouflage mask.

Kaoru coughed and tried to put her wits back together while Enishi pulled off his mask, letting his hair spring free. The angry tears that had been threatening to fall became relieved ones and she gave a hiccupping sob mixed with her continued gasping while Enishi examined her face with a mixture of anxiety and anger.

"I knew they couldn't protect you properly. Shinomori and Goro think like army men, not criminals. . ."

Of course, at that moment Misao had to enter with a steaming cup of something that hit the floor as soon as she opened the door. It was easy to misread the situation, Kaoru reflected, unable to explain as her ribs continued to insist she was being crushed. Enishi, dripping wet and obviously an intruder, was perched over her, knife in hand. Kaoru was sobbing and gasping under him, nightgown sliced down the middle. Throwing stars seemed to practically materialize in Misao's hands as the small woman threw a small arsenal in Enishi's direction. He dodged easily enough. . . behind Kaoru.

"You coward! Let her go, you'll never get out of here alive!"

"Misch-hurgh." Kaoru had almost gotten a word out. Her panicked breathes had turned more steady and she would be able to get something going in the communication department. Until then, she held out her arms in front of Enishi, shaking her head.

"Kaoru! What are you doing!" Misao looked hurt. Kaoru held up a finger, asking for a moment or two, and she felt Enishi's arms wrap around her waist, holding scraps of silk to her and hiding her modesty while being entirely indecent at the same time.

They stayed in silent tableau while Kaoru found her breath again and then she said simply. "He saved me."

"What?"

"I don't know how, but this nightgown you gave me had some sort of a. . .a. . . spell on it." She gasped, a sentence even that long was a lot of effort. "Why are you here?" Kaoru twisted her face to try to catch Enishi's eye.

Misao still looked poised to strike if he made a move. Enishi regarded her with amusement, and Kaoru wished he wouldn't. He had enough enemies in this household as it was.

"I ran into Sagara who is most upset he wasn't given guard duty for you. It didn't take too much of a runaround to get a name, and then all I had to do was follow the braid girl around town until she stopped here." Enishi stroked the side of her jaw. "Good thing I did too. The rain was particularly lucky, since any noises I made were sure to be covered up. Is that enough for you? I'm not going to hurt her." He snapped that last bit at Misao who was looking unsure but still very agitated.

"Kaoru?"

"It's. . .ok. Just go get Tokio." Misao didn't need to be told that twice and was gone in a flash. "And. . . hurg. . . you. Outside. Now."

Enishi looked at her like he couldn't believe what she had said, his arm tightening painfully around her.

"I need to change. . . urg. . . and just because you saved my life. . . ahhh, ow. . . doesn't mean you get to see me naked!"

"Oh really?" He nuzzled his nose against her neck, but it wasn't his cold skin that made her shiver and she was glad she was already obviously out of breath.

"OUT!"

***

"Shinomori is having a fit."

"As well he should, my dear, since you exposed our precious puzzle piece to danger."

Tokio bit into a pear and snorted at her husband. "The danger she was in was nothing of my doing, and not something I could have prevented. And I knew Yukishiro was on the grounds the whole time."

"I did wonder why he wasn't slashed into small pieces by now. You treat that girl like she was your own daughter."

Now Tokio sat up and gave him a dangerous glare. "If that were true she'd be yours too and maybe you'd think of her as more than a strategic gain but as a person too."

"Changing the subject won't get you out of explaining why you allowed Yukishiro within a thousand feet of the princess. You know how unpredictable he is, and we can't have random factors messing things up at this stage."

"I had a feeling," Tokio looked levelly at Goro. "And you haven't been the one living with a mopey princess for the better part of a week."

Goro narrowed his eyes, their pale yellow irises not unlike the wolf he had often been accused of being. "You endangered the princess, let someone who was ordered to be strictly kept away from her into her company with no idea of his motives, and all because you had a feeling and were annoyed?"

"Before you pretend you have enough high ground in this discussion to demoralize me, I would like to point out some important facts to you." Tokio set the pear down on the table next to her and leaned back in her chair. "I know for a fact that you watch over your soldiers and make sure they are performing up to standard, but you have something far more important than any one soldier occupying a space in your house and you can barely think of her as something beyond a symbol. We need her to be inspirational, we need her to be willing, but what we don't need is a colorless and spiritless shell of a person just poised to discourage our soldiers on the eve of battle!"

Tokio picked up her fruit again, and took a bite.

"Besides, I like Yukishiro. He's got guts to try to sneak into my house."

"Our house."

"When was the last time you were back there?" She gave him a more concerned smile. "And when was the last time you had a full night of sleep?"

"No sleep for the wicked, my dear." Goro tried to smile, but it faltered on the way to his lips. "Will the princess be in a state to address the troops by the end of next week? I wanted to get them fired up before the attack. There's such a small window before the first snow."

Tokio gave a glance to her husband that said it was a surprisingly stupid question to come from him. "Of course she will; she's the princess. She knows her duty as well as we know ours." Goro continued to look skeptical.

***

Yumi paced about her room looking as perfect in her beauty as she ever had, and yet she burned with the knowledge that she was still a far second behind. . . Kaoru. More than a week ago, when she had asked the mirror her usual question she had gone into hysterics when someone who should have been a picked over corpse appeared to be riding a horse at breakneck pace across the countryside. It was impossible. The girl's heart had been practically enshrined in the trophy room next to the heads of great horned beasts and snarling many toothed fishes. She had confronted Soujirou who calmly smiled and told her that he had never lied to her. The princess had been escorted out of the kingdom and he had brought her back a heart.

When she struck him, her nails had left claw-like gouges on his youthful face. He had not ducked, and he gave her the usual cordial bow when she stalked back to her room. Infuriating boy. Impossible and unpredictable. She would kill him if he weren't so useful.

She almost thought she recognized the man traveling with Kaoru, but Yumi had often flirted with handsome men and they all ran together until Shishio came along. It took constant vigilance at the mirror to figure out where Kaoru was, and who she was with. All Yumi could see was Kaoru and her immediate surroundings, so it took a while.

As soon as she had an idea, she formed a plan. She had one of her ladies in waiting take a number of clothing items she had spelled with various deadly charms and travel to sell them to Kaoru's lady in waiting, the girl with big eyes and a long braid down her back. Yumi had waited, neither eating nor sleeping while she watched the mirror for signs that her trap would spring. Then when the braid girl brought in the nightgown, Yumi had crowed with relief. Here was victory. . .

. . . that was snatched from her grasp by a white haired interloper.

It seemed Yumi would have to leave the palace and take care of things personally. What a distasteful prospect. She would question her lady in waiting as to where she had encountered the braid girl and then figure things out from there. Shishio need not know, he had his own troubles lately. When she came to him with certain knowledge that the princess was dead then maybe he would look upon her kindly for easing some of his burden.

The last attempt had been too hasty. The next try would need to be subtle. Something lingering, something painful. . .

Something disfiguring.

Yumi laughed until she fell down into a faint, after days of no food and sleep, and mercifully she did not dream.


	8. Chapter 8

In the end it was a lack of ability to transport the mirror that caused her the most heartache. The immorality of killing the girl who had once been as close to a daughter as she would ever have had disappeared from her heart the day she thought she held the girl's heart in her hand. There had been no more room for sadness amidst the raw triumph. Yumi would win this, or else it would destroy her. She saw it as a battle for survival. It didn't matter to her that the other party was unaware. In fact, that was in even better than the other person knowing because it made it that much easier to fool them.

That old man seemed very surprised to learn that having witnesses was not something Yumi would tolerate after he sold her that poison. Shishio had chosen his consort well and taught her many things along the way. This act was out of love for him as much as for herself. The poison would sicken the princess, torture her, then continue to twist her flesh after she died. It was everything Yumi wanted and had dreamed of for her, that little interloper. Kaoru could have lived a long life as a servant if she had simply slipped and cut her cheek or had constant hives in reaction to some allergy, or had gotten the pox.

"How much longer?" It was cold, even wrapped up in many furs and with heated pans placed periodically under her skirts. She was feeling rushed, anxious to get there quickly since she was without her beloved mirror. It felt like her strength was oozing out of her bones when she was this far away from it. That it could be an addiction, a source of danger, had occurred to her before. However, like most junkies, the thrill of use was enough impetus to ignore the ill effects. Shishio's gift had come with a steep price and she didn't regret it to this day.

"By nightfall, your majesty."

So just a few more hours in this cramped carriage and then she could rest and prepare. It was going to be a busy day, and she had to be sure that nothing much had changed since she had last looked in the mirror. Yumi's eyes became glassy as she thought of how transformed she would feel when she returned, sure of her victory, and saw herself once again reflected in its surface as the true beauty in the kingdom. And how much more would Shishio value her for getting rid of the girl? The anticipation made her as impatient as a child again. She demanded the horses be driven to their limit, and they were.

***

"Get lost brat."

"No."

"I don't need you here. _We_ don't need you here."

"That's not what Aoshi said."

"And since when were you so eager to listen to him?"

"Ever since you started making sure you and Kaoru were alone as much as possible." Yahiko bristled, his too thin growing body trying to look impressively bulky as he faced the taller and more muscular man. "And I won't let you."

Enishi had thought the boy's deepened devotion to Kaoru was cute, and had even acknowledged to himself that it resembled his past behavior towards his sister, but that didn't make it any less annoying. "Shouldn't you be calling her 'Your Royal Highness' if you're going to be so uppity, twerp?"

"He can call me Kaoru if he likes. Now stop arguing, I can hear Yahiko all the way down the hall and I know this is probably your fault." She crossed her arms to look at Enishi who was wearing his injured innocent expression.

"I was just trying to get the puppy off of your heels, but if you like him there. . ."

"I'm not a puppy!" Yahiko exclaimed loudly.

"Stop yelling!" Kaoru insisted imitating his volume.

"You're the one who's yelling!" Yahiko turned on Kaoru readily enough, now that he was riled.

Enishi would have continued to look on, amused, if he hadn't wanted to get rid of the kid and pursue a more adult. . . conversation. . . with Kaoru. She had recovered from her near crushing with remarkable aplomb. It was hard to believe she was supposed to be a princess. Weren't they supposed to be delicate and beautiful? She was beautiful, that couldn't be denied, but it wasn't delicate so much as healthy. Her skin glowed, her hair was shiny and full with a hint of tangle because she moved around so much. There was often a blush on her cheeks since she was busy these days helping Tokio when she could with whatever she could. It was a complete turnabout, or so he had heard, from how she had acted before he arrived. His ego was fully ready to accept the compliment.

What it signified however, was something more complicated than what he was ready to actually deal with. She was fond of him, yes that was obvious, attracted to him, well who wouldn't be, and ready to both argue with and kiss him at the drop of a hat. But, he wondered increasingly, was any of this love? The question hadn't seemed important until Tokio had cornered him yesterday and nearly demanded to know of his intentions. That woman was a regular mother bear when it came to Kaoru. He hadn't lied to her when he said he wasn't entirely sure. The smaller woman, refined until she was up in arms, had given him a look that would have sent weaker men into fits of panic and told him he better figure it out and soon. The ultimatum was out there, and he was taking it seriously more because it was something that weighed on his mind anyway and not because he actually feared Tokio. Much.

The only valuable interpersonal relationship he had to compare it to was the one he had had with his sister. This wasn't quite the same, though he did want to protect Kaoru just as fiercely. The feeling he had when he thought of her was strong in a way that wasn't born of family ties or long association. They were still people who had only known one another a few months, albeit he had saved her life. One big difference between them was the things he wanted to do to and with Kaoru were certainly thoughts he never would have entertained about his sister. But the jealousy he felt when other people were around her certainly had a familiar flavor.

This was still new. He didn't think he could come to any conclusion about how he felt for a while yet, no matter how much anyone demanded such things or even if he demanded it from himself. Feelings were there or they weren't, and what overshadowed everything in his daily life was his need for revenge. Until that was completed he didn't think he would be able to love or to accept anyone else's love.

Bah, to think about such things was a useless exercise in self reflection. Yahiko was wandering down the hallway with Kaoru already, still arguing. They certainly brought out the worst in one another and if you could catch them being civil, that was a miracle. But this was probably cathartic for her, after being thrust into her princess role so firmly and isolated from a normal life so completely once again. The little bit they had talked since he had gotten here had allowed him to easily establish that much. She hated being put on pedestals.

Her modesty had made her address to the troops a particularly impressive display, actually. They looked at her, her strength and beauty, standing firm in the cold with them and telling them the words Goro had prepared for her. . . well, damn it all, he had been out there in the crowd too and he had felt it. They were ready to rally behind her, behind what she stood for: a return to better times. He hated to admit Aoshi or Goro had been right and that they needed someone like her to represent them. If they hadn't needed her, he could have stolen her away by now. Life was, as always, unfair in many senses.

Up ahead he noticed Kaoru and Yahiko were talking to someone, gesturing rather than arguing. He couldn't make out who it might be, and lengthened his steps to catch up.

". . . back the way you came, take a right, go past the sliding doors with the star above the door frame. . ." Yahiko was giving directions, but the old woman looked really confused.

"It's the cleaning lady. She came last Friday. Don't worry, I've seen her before." Kaoru said this for Enishi's sake as he narrowed his eyes at the old woman. Even if this section of town was well monitored, he felt uneasy about something.

The old woman wandered off, with Yahiko leading her. Kaoru turned and waved, and the old lady waved back. Maybe she was a little too old to be cleaning. Of course, to Enishi's view, if she couldn't even find her way around the house correctly then she was a security risk. On the subject of Kaoru's safety he, Aoshi, and Tokio were of one mind. He would tell one of the others this evening and it would be taken care of soon. He had better not tell Kaoru since she would no doubt be upset at him getting some poor old thing fired. The girl's sense of perspective was all askew due to her soppy heart.

"Why do you look like that?" She was talking around something, and there was a paper wrapper in her hand.

"What are you eating?"

"It was just some candy the lady gave to us. She was eating some when we found her and she offered Yahiko and I some too. It tastes like apple. I wish I had another piece to offer you."

Enishi frowned. "I don't like sweets. And you shouldn't be taking candy from strangers."

"I said she was having some too, didn't I? And unlike you I actually rather want more sweets. Misao was sneaking me chocolate until Tokio found out and ever since then it's been nothing but healthy food. If I have to be a princess again, I could at least be able to eat the things I want now and then." She swayed and put a hand to her head. She looked for a moment liked she was stunned. Enishi figured she should breathe more when she made her little speeches.

There was still something bugging him about this whole situation. It could just be his usual paranoia. He was too sensitive to every situation and it had caused problems in the past. Enishi wasn't a nervous person by nature, just a nervous person by habit. It was one of those things that made battle very easy but living a normal life much less so.

"I guess I don't have to tell you that you'll spoil your appetite."

"Maybe I'll just stay in my room during dinner." She had been taking her meals in the kitchen area with everyone else, since leaving her alone had proven to be a bad idea in general.

"Maybe I'll keep you company." Enishi drawled, he reached out to take her hand and slide his fingers over her knuckles.

"Maybe I'll just vomit up lunch." Yahiko was already back. That kid was too fast for his own good.

**

"Even I know that old woman was the wicked queen. C'mon mom, this stuff is for kids." The boy is interested, even a little on edge. He's invested something emotionally into this and doesn't want it to end. Stalling tactics are another thing his mother thinks he gets from his father.

"It's easy when I tell it like this, but if it was you there then how could you guess?"

"I would have known. If it was me, I would have seen through that stupid disguise." His mother laughs. "I would! And then I'd drag that nasty witch outside and slash!"

His mother looks at her little boy in slight shock. "You, young man, are not going to speak to me so casually about killing so much as a bug again. Are we clear? You know how much I dislike it. The whole purpose of being strong is so that you don't have to kill. There are other ways."

"Don't listen to your mother. That sort of justice is for politicians." The father is there, unexpected, standing in the doorway. Who knows how long he has been there.

The mother looks back at him, displeased. "Don't contradict me. We are not above the law and you won't be telling him such things."

"Well, in this case, I fully agree with him. The witch should have been taken care of from the beginning and none of this would have happened. Everyone could have been saved a lot of pain." The father walks in and puts a hand on the mother's shoulder. The kid is sitting up in bed, happy to receive rare attention from both parents at the same time.

"She was punished, and I suppose I can't do anything about it now."

"So what happened?" Even basking in the glory of dual parental attention the kid would still rather hear the end of the story. The mother ruffles his hair and launches back in, the father behind her unsmiling.

"After this, it gets a little tricky for me to explain. Maybe your father can help you out, he knows this part much better than I do."

***

She was dying, and there was nothing Enishi could do about it. It was a slow and painful death too, which was breaking his heart a little every moment of the day. He hadn't slept much for the past three days and Kaoru hadn't been in a position to speak for one. She was delirious, sweating, babbling about all sorts of things. Sometimes she would call out for her mother or her father, more often she would call out for him. Sometimes she would just plead to no one in particular not to be left alone. It was a good thing the soldiers had marched out to place themselves at the site of the intended battle because if they had seen her like this it would have been devastating.

Misao hadn't wanted to leave, but Tokio insisted she was needed to be a runner on the field and take messages between units, and Yahiko had been given similar orders. They were young and fast and small, all things that made them invaluable as runners even if not quite as much as fighters. Yahiko had been obviously torn between staying by Kaoru's side or engaging in the battle he had trained to fight in for years now. Sagara had stayed behind after a surprisingly loud and vigorous verbal battle with Aoshi. It had verged on mutiny, but he was here to sit by Kaoru's side when Enishi passed out for the few hours of sleep he needed per day. Aoshi had looked like he didn't care, but the man was obviously choked up with held back emotion when he had visited to say goodbye. Miaso had just cried by his side.

She had managed a weak laugh and waved at him. It was mere hours before she lapsed into the fever that she hadn't emerged from in any conscious sense of the word. He had been there when she fell, watched her pupils dilate and her lips crack. If it was possible he loved her more in that moment than he had every previous moment they had been together. There was no use beating around the bush. The second person he loved in his lifetime was dying, and once again he was useless.

The door cracked and a bedraggled Sagara entered the room. He looked like he had been to hell and back. The stubble on his chin and the bags under his eyes made him look as sunken and hopeless as Enishi. Kaoru had already become like a little sister to him, Enishi had a feeling. To a soldier your family was what you made of it, and you were used to them being removed from you by violence. However, sickness or dumb luck were far more difficult to cope with. It wasn't her time. "I looked everywhere, but no one knows where to find the woman. They say she disappeared right after you saw her, pretty much. It's like you said."

". . . please. . . please. . ." Kaoru thrashed about a little and then settled down again. It would have been more merciful if she had been asleep. It would have seemed like death then, and Enishi would have had time to adjust to the idea. This fever, this obvious sense of life, was cruel.

"I'm going out." Enishi stood up, swayed a little, then forced himself to ignore the way his body was screaming for sleep. "I'll find the woman, I'll make her pay."

"How do you know it was her? You don't know anything. You're grasping at straws and making me reach for them too!"

Enishi looked at Sagara, then looked down at Kaoru. "Her hands weren't lined. The woman looked old, she had a scraggly voice, but there wasn't a line on her hands anywhere. I'll find the bitch who hurt Kaoru, and I'll kill her with my bare hands."

Easier said than done, he discovered, but he wasn't without contacts or resources. As it turned out, some of those underworld contacts knew that a certain visitor from the palace had arrived and then suddenly left this morning. She had paid a lot of money to a number of people not to make her presence widely known. Nothing else was going on in town and no unusual bodies had popped up. Enishi had heard from Kaoru about what had happened and knew how dangerous anything from the palace was to her. If that was the only thing of note then he would follow it even if it was a dead end.

One tired horse later, he was holding up a royal carriage and wondering what sort of a future he could have after this. Yumi, in all of her icily beautiful glory stepped down and confronted this supposed highwayman. She smiled in that self confident was he had seen pretty and egotistical women look him over with before, as if he could be. Yumi was out of luck, though, he had no mercy in his heart for her or just about any other person on the planet. If Kaoru died, he was convinced that his sense of humanity would follow her.

"I have some questions."

"I don't need to listen to this. Have you killed all my guards? I was simply wondering."

"A few. Two are left alive should I prove to have made a mistake, but I have a hunch I'm not." He stared intently at her hands, willing himself to remember. Then there it was, a fat ebony ring dully insulting him by existing. So he hadn't imagined it, when she had waved he had seen the same ring. It had been a minor detail, nothing to particularly note, since jewelry was less useful than tattoos or facial shape to identify a person with. But in this case it was damning enough.

"What could a thug like you possibly have to say to me?"

Enishi was disgruntled by her poise. "You aren't afraid of me."

"And why should I be? If you kill me Shishio will know, find you, and have you executed so it isn't in your best interests. The same fate awaits you if you hold me hostage. He won't pay a ransom for me, I can already tell you that." Yumi smiled and pulled the ruff of her large coat tighter around her neck. "If you let me go then we'll just pretend this never happened and everyone can sleep better tonight."

Except Kaoru. "I know you poisoned her. Just tell me with what and I might spare your life."

"Pardon?" Those sickly sweet tones she had offered him before soured with that one word.

"The princess, Kaoru, I know you poisoned her, I know when and how but I want to know with what. If you can tell me that, honestly, then I won't kill you." Yumi's eye flicker gave away the man sneaking up behind him. Enishi must be tired if such an amateur could begin to get the drop on him. It was just the work of a moment to slit the man's throat before turning back to Yumi with a blood smear across his chest from where it had sprayed him. The man had been too close for comfort.

"Who are you? I know you're part of that rebellion. If you kill me all your little plans will be in shambles. Right now Shishio doesn't know as much as I do about your attack, but as soon as you kill me he'll be on his guard. What makes the girl so important? Why is she so special?" Yumi shrieked, almost not even asking Enishi so much as beseeching the sky for an answer.

Enishi was slightly odd, but he knew crazy when he saw it. This woman had entirely lost a while ago. He might be there with her if he hadn't had a goal in mind. Revenge, then Kaoru, had given him a renewed sense of purpose. But this witch was threatening to ruin both. It would be so easy to cut her down right here, but he refrained.

"I ask again, tell me what you used, and I'll spare your life."

"Not one apothecary in a thousand will know what it is, so I don't care if you take it. Here's the rest. I didn't need much." She tossed the vial down onto the ground where it broke, scattering the fine powder. Enishi wasn't concerned with her theatrics. There was enough still sitting in the glass and among the shards for him to gather it up.

Damn the woman but she was probably not bluffing about Shishio knowing if something happened to her. Well, there were ways of dealing with people if you knew what got to them. And he had heard the tales about the witch queen and her magic mirror. The kingdom had been bought for it, so everyone had an idea of the story. If that was so, then this was far sweeter revenge than killing her anyway.

The marks were deep, they had to be to leave a good scar. And he was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to see out of one of her eyes ever again. That split he gave her lip would probably heal, but with any luck it would be awkward as well. Hot oil would have been more effective, but this would do just fine. Scars would be just as disfiguring to her as sliding skin.

She had already screamed her throat raw by the time he had gathered up what was left of the poison and started back with one of the horses from her carriage. It was far fresher than the one he had "borrowed" in the city. She would get back to Shishio in another day or two, probably, and by then the attack would have already been launched. Things were falling into place, even if it was still to be seen if they were in his favor or not. Enishi wished he believed in something, he could have asked for a little help.

***

"And then the dashing prince rode to the fair princess' rescue. She had been poisoned into a deep sleep and no one could wake her, and having confronted the evil witch and defeating her he wanted to go two for two on the events as a whole."

The mother snorts. "Dashing prince. . ."

"No comments from the side. Who's telling this story? You were asleep."

"I know for a fact that Sano said you woke up every apothecary and doctor in town and threatened to kill them, every last one of them and their families, if they didn't find a cure by the next day."

The boy looks like he's just realizing this might not be the truth and nothing but the truth. Magic and danger and violence and true love are exciting, but how much of what they told him is the real story? He trusts his mother, at least. And because he trusts his mother he knows better than to entirely trust his father, which is part of why he idolizes him already.

"Well, I needed results. And fear is an amazing motivator." The father is smiling. He thinks this is funny, after all, but the way he tightens his hold on the mother's hand shows how he remembers that day as well as could be expected. "And then the doctors produced a magic pill, and the prince slipped it to the princess with a kiss. . ."

***

"Hold her up, damn you! Open up her damn throat so I can pour this in!"

"Stop it! She's barely breathing! This will probably kill her. What crackpot told you you had a chance?"

Enishi tried to prop Kaoru's limp and nearly comatose form against the headboard since Sagara was proving reluctant to aid him. "The leader of the group, a Dr. Takuni, told me that this was the best chance she'd have if any. And even if the chance is fractional I'd rather take it than not. She's dying anyway, Sagara." For the first time in his life Enishi wondered if he would have to plead with another human being, actually beg, to get something he wanted. But Sagara saved him from the humiliation and relented.

"This had better work or I'll tell Aoshi you desecrated her corpse."

"Now is not the time for jokes like that you idiot. Hurry."

Carefully, they propped her up and opened up her throat. The liquid went down and Enishi petted her throat as if she were an animal to help her muscles get the liquid into her esophagus and clear the way for her to breathe again. That she still was taking in shallow breaths was the only way they knew she was alive. Her heartbeat was so slow and her body was so cold. . .

Would she die of lack of nourishment or hydration before she died from the poison? Her body had to be weak. Sagara and he took turns watching over her as hour after hour she clung to a tenuous fiber of existence. She didn't seem to be getting any better or any worse. More than a day passed, as did the battle.

They gave a thought to those who were fighting Shishio, wondering if the emissaries to the other kingdoms had gotten there and if the borders were being attacked as Goro had stipulated. With Shishio's forces spread thin, being assaulted on all sides, then this blitz against him might succeed. But that remained to be seen for probably another week, leading into winter weather and fallow fields being soaked with blood. It was terribly nice of Goro to wait until after the harvest to attack.

"Do you think she'll pull through?" Sagara had finally asked. He had felt as much hope as Enishi had that the antidote would work, but couldn't allow himself to get his spirits up.

"She's too stubborn not to." Enishi said. Kaoru was bullheaded. She allowed herself to be dragged down, but she always pulled herself back up twice as high once she got over it. He expected no less of her in this instance as well.

They force fed her broth that night, changed her bed sheets, and dozed in chairs until they woke up stiff and pained the next morning. No change.

Word came from the battlefield that afternoon. Things were too soon to tell, but the fact they hadn't been crushed at the outset was a good sign. Casualties were limited and the weather was still favoring them. Sagara seemed pleased, Enishi was indifferent. No change.

They forced more broth down her, changed her bed sheets again, and Sagara left Enishi alone to brood with. . . Kaoru. They were still saying Kaoru but there was a pause now, as if they were substituting Kaoru for "the body". She wasn't dead yet, she wasn't an "it." Her chest still rose and fell as the coma went on. Her fever would rise and fall as well. She was no worse, but no better. Enishi wondered how long this would persist, and how long he could stand seeing her in this half-life when he didn't get to ask her half of the things he wanted to, or taunt her some more, or hear her laugh at one of his jokes like she laughed at Sagara's.

They had too much to accomplish together for her to give up now. "I'll never forgive you if you die." Enishi said, placing a hand on her chest. She was wearing a gaudy nightgown. It was all they could find at the bottom of a pile of clothes that were probably meant to be thrown out. It didn't suit her.

"Watch. . . the hands. . . ."

It sounded like. . . sarcasm.

"If you die," he said sweetly, making damn sure his eyes didn't dare leek right now and spoil things. "I'll molest your corpse."

Kaoru opened her eyes, her lips twitching into what might have been a smile under better circumstances. "I'll haunt you."

Damn it was too much. It was just too much. "I don't care if you do. Just don't leave me, ever." He removed his glasses, folding them and putting them to the side so he could kiss her on the cheek.

"Does this mean. . . you love me?" Her eyes closed again, as if she were still tired. She probably was.

He had said it a thousand times in his head ever since he thought she would die. But now she was alive and it was a whole new deal. "I think we both need some water. SAGARA!"

***

"Yeah yeah and they lived happily ever after right? All these stories end the same way."

The boy is yawning. It really was a long story, interesting enough, but it needed 100 more dragons. Or something with lots of teeth. He is still pretty young, after all, and monsters are exciting.

"Kid, you need to learn a little patience." The father says this and the mother bites her tongue as she laughs at that comment coming from him of all people. "And, no, that's not everything. Your mother can tell the rest from here."

"I was going to anyway. You and your 'handsome prince' talk. . . ."

"Dashing prince, and it's dramatic."

"Everything is dramatic with you." The mother looks at the lamp, guttering and fading. Yes, it's almost done. Maybe someday she will write this story down. Then again she was never good with putting ink to paper and it was a much better oral tale. "Remember that the witch was still left alive by the," She laughs a little too hard and gets a nasty look for the father "dashing prince. . ."

***

They found Yumi later, dead, her mirror shattered but not in pieces. She had been killed in the first storming of the palace, or so people thought, since she died by sword wounds rather than by her own hand. They didn't know it was her until they had unwrapped the scarves that had been obscuring her face. No one mourned her loss, maybe Kaoru, but Yumi had never been much of a mother to her and with the revelation that she had thrice tried to kill her Kaoru didn't feel as much compassion as she might have. Shishio escaped, ultimately, but missing at least one arm and probably being rather messily stabbed through the leg. They found Enishi unconscious and bleeding to death and everyone assumed Shishio died from the injuries he sustained from the younger swordsman, but it was never confirmed. Enishi recovered and refused to speak of the events of that night, but few people pried for details at any rate. His revenge was his own business.

What was far more important was that this and the surrounding kingdoms were now freed from Shishio's dictatorial hold. Things were looking up, and people were feeling more positive. Then winter hit in earnest and the regular people were more interested in burying their dead and surviving than they were in the politics of the kingdom. When spring came they paid attention again because there was a coronation to go to. Goro would make a good king, everyone thought, since he had made such a good general. He was a name that was remembered from the old days, and the loyalists were allowed to show their true colors once more without fear. It would take a while to readjust.

Kaoru was brought out once more, and paraded around a little, but she reminded so many people of the bad old times that despite her beauty she was not received very positively by most of the rest of the populace. The soldiers loved her, the new king and queen supported her and allowed her to keep her title as a princess of the realm, but she willingly faded into something like obscurity as fast as possible.

There wasn't even a formal announcement when a year after Goro and Tokio ascended to their thrones she was married to some minor lord with recently granted land holdings in what had been disputed territory under old treaties. The new king had resolved a lot of issues with an alacrity that surprised much of the bureaucracy. And when he installed a particular white haired former crime lord in a position that had him in a trusted position monitoring a main trade route through the mountains, the minimal protests were ignored when he cited that it was 'better to be with them than against them'.

Enishi told Kaoru later that he just wanted to see more profits from Enishi's business than the crown had before. It was almost as much fun running a fast growing city as it had been when he had run his criminal empire. However, there were far fewer legs and arms broken. He actually seemed sad about that. Kaoru would purposefully ignore him when he invited her to fight like that. Most of the time.

Ok, pretty much every time she couldn't help but say _something_, but she knew he was doing it on purpose so it was hard to get angry at him like she used to back when they had lived in the cabin.

***

"At least the cabin was warm in the winter. Stone isn't very forgiving." Kaoru whispers as she puts the blankets more securely around her little boy. He's the combination of everything most wonderful and most terrible about both she and Enishi. The kid would be a terror when he realized that, but for now he is still sweet.

"You didn't actually live there for any of the winters. It was a wreck. The roof wouldn't have lasted much longer. . ." Enishi goes to take care of the lamp and then finds Kaoru's hand to lead her out of the room.

"You came back early." She's a little tired herself. Somehow the days are so busy, but she tries to put aside time at least twice or more a week to tuck her boy in. "If I had known. . ."

"Then you wouldn't have done anything differently."

"That's not true, I would have told him a different story. He likes to hear about duels at dawn and honor and all those nice things."

"You'll make him weak. If you push that knight's code stuff into him he'll never learn how to fight dirty." They are walking towards their rooms. "Let's have another kid. You can train this one, I'll train the next and then we'll pit them against one another and see who wins."

Kaoru sighs. "You are reprehensible and amoral. I don't know why I married you."

"I don't know why either." Enishi says, but he pulls her into their room with the intent to give her a good reason to stay married to him.

"So is the 'handsome prince' going to sweep me off my feet?"

Enishi pretends to think about it seriously, then settles on pushing her backwards onto their bed. "Dashing prince. And now that you're off your feet, I have a few ideas. . ."


End file.
